Broadband and Beyond in the Bronx - Episode 480 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

On this week’s episode of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast, host Christopher Mitchell is joined by Danny Peralta, the Executive Managing Director of The Point in the Bronx, New York which has. The Point has been at the forefront of revitalizing the South Bronx’s Hunts Point neighborhood working to address  environmental issues, increase access to the arts, and even expand Internet connectivity.

The two discuss The Point’s journey to tackle broadband infrastructure resiliency issues in the face of Hurricane Maria back in 2015. While the project was initially focused on small businesses, The Point has built a network that is beginning to connect residents and making efforts  to address the digital divide in the community. 

Peralta explains how The Point is part of a larger movement in the community to take back ownership of its resources and improve conditions for residents, making it better for generations to come. 

This show is 32 minutes long and can be played on this page or via Apple Podcasts or the tool of your choice using this feed

Transcript below. 

We want your feedback and suggestions for the show-please e-mail us or leave a comment below.

Listen to other episodes here or view all episodes in our index. See other podcasts from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance here.

Thanks to Arne Huseby for the music. The song is Warm Duck Shuffle and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license.

Transcript

Danny Peralta: People that come to our digital stewardship training, pushing the young people, they probably walk out of there with a stronger sense of how to use it and how to use it responsibly and what the effects potentially could be if you're not really paying attention to it. And that's all we can hope for.

Christopher Mitchell: Welcome to another episode of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. I'm Christopher Mitchell at the Institute for a local self-reliance in St. Paul Minnesota. Today, I'm speaking with Danny Peralta, who is the executive managing director at the Point in the Bronx in New York City in New York. Welcome.

Danny Peralta: Well, thank you. Thank you. Good morning, Chris. How you doing today?

Christopher Mitchell: Oh, I'm doing good. And I got to say, man, one of the things I always love talking about you is I love the accent. I grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and I love all these east coast pocket accents that you get around. So it's always a joy to speak with you.

Danny Peralta: All right. Well, likewise, man. You got that upper Midwest thing going on too, man.

Christopher Mitchell: Now I do. Yeah, it took a while. I still don't say Minnesota. That's one of the telltale ones.

Danny Peralta: I love that. I'm going to use that one. I'm going to use that one next time I'm up there.

Christopher Mitchell: Oh, for sure. So tell me you're at the Point.

Danny Peralta: Yes, sir.

Christopher Mitchell: What is the Point?

Danny Peralta: Sure, yeah. So again, I'm broadcasting live from south Bronx, New York City, the Hunts Point. Well, excuse me. The Point community development corporation, I should say, is a community based organization that has been around now for 27 years. And we really have been at the forefront of hoping to revitalize that community at Hunts Point in the south Bronx. And we do it primarily with youth development, a lot of arts and cultural work and then we do a lot of policy work behind the scenes, environmental justice work as well. Always working with our residents, young people and our partners, honestly, to achieve an interesting end. A new end for our community, let's say that.

Christopher Mitchell: Awesome. And we're going to talk more about a little bit of the history of the community and all the different things you do after we sort of touch on broadband. So people who listen to the show have a sense of why we're pulling you into this today.

Danny Peralta: Sure, of course.

Christopher Mitchell: So tell me about what you're doing particularly in broadband at the Point?

2:22

Danny Peralta: Sure. Again, we're very fortunate that we've been able to be, I guess, entrusted with this project to lead a community network. And in 2015, 2014, we entered into this thing called the soft Bronx community resiliency agenda. And it was really this plan to kind of protect our community from the climate change that was coming. We are a waterfront community and essentially, we were trying to, like I said, protect it from the heat and potential water surges we saw. Then Maria came, the hurricane came. Obviously created a lot of havoc in our community, and similar communities. And there was one neighborhood, one project that remained, I guess, resilient through the storm. [crosstalk 00:03:05].

Christopher Mitchell: Right, it stayed up.

Danny Peralta: Exactly. And there was a community communication that, excuse me, in Red Hook, by Red Hook initiative that actually provided communication for weeks after there was no ability to do so in the neighborhood. Our infrastructure was destroyed by the salt water. So we essentially, we learned from that and the idea was how do we adapt that in Hunts Point? And again, we were very fortunate to be entrusted with this project by New America and the Hunts Point EDC. And essentially we were able to start to build out a community network, which we thought initially was just the small businesses.

Danny Peralta: And in the last three or four years has evolved really to kind of offer Internet and a reliable link for that matter for several thousand people a month, totally for free at this point. 100% stewarded by the young people and some of the community members with the idea that again, we train the neighbors to manage it, to maintain it and to continue to build off of what we've done so far. At this point, like I said, we maybe service a couple thousand people a month, depending on what you consider service.

Danny Peralta: And people just tap into it. Primarily we're noticing on mobile devices. That's like a big thing. People are maybe in transit. We have a lot of workers that come in industrial neighborhood. So again, we're offering these amenities and at the same time, it makes us think about all these other pieces, again, that we rely on. You talk about self reliance. Like where's the ownership of these, of this infrastructure and how do we, not only own it at some point, but how do we kind of use it in a way that is most practical and most useful for our community and not just because we have to use it or because it's there. We again, thinking about emergency communication for all communities. Emergency drills plans, ways to kind of get people socially together with this virtual tool that sometimes tends to divide us, especially in our community.

4:54

Danny Peralta: Sometimes, the Internet divide is real. A lot of people do not have access to it. And obviously that means less access to jobs and opportunities. And when people do have access to it, again, the literacy around how people use the Internet and what we use it for is kind of shot as well. And again, we, I find for example, some of the beef that young people have is sometimes spurred by, let's say a comment on a social media tweet. I mean, we heard about the stuff that happens with Facebook, some of their Instagram research where young women are having really poor senses of their bodies, right? All this stuff is playing out in real time in our community and it's having, it's exacerbating health issues that we've already had. I'll stop that. But this is really a network again, that hopefully brings people together and offers them opportunities that again, that are that radically new for our community.

Christopher Mitchell: Yeah. So there's a lot of things to pull out there, but I want to make sure that people sort of got one of the things that led you to going down this path. And that is, hurricane comes, Verizon national company, charter spectrum national company, Altese global company, these massive networks, they all fall apart and basically collapse in a lot of neighborhoods. And this Red Hook initiative, which is mostly run by volunteers and that sort of a thing, run by the community. That stays up and people are able to use it to make sure that they're well connected. So that's pretty amazing. So then you're looking at that and the Point is looking at that and saying, well, we should do something like that. Now you're not charging people for access. How does it get started in terms of the, where does the money come from to get the equipment and things like that to start the training?

Danny Peralta: Yeah, so essentially we were again funded by the EDC, which is the economic development corporation in Hunts Point. If you could imagine kind of, Hunts Point being the hub for a lot of the food that comes to the east coast. So we're like the second food, largest food market in the world, honestly. So the Hunts Point food market has a lot of energy. It sucks up a lot of energy, a lot of refrigeration. And that's where, again, the initial plans came. We thought there's going to be a big storm. This market is below a sea level. It's going to flood. There's no resilient energy.

Danny Peralta: And that's kind of how we started thinking. But essentially what we learned is that there's a lot of different components to resiliency. One of them obviously, again, being communication. And so that's how we kind of entered into it. The EDC came to us, New America came to us, said look, "We want to develop a mesh network in this community. We don't have ties to this community. And it has to be led by community members for us to get this funding. Would you be interested in doing that work?"

7:28

Danny Peralta: And we said, we kind of thought about it. And we kind of said, we can tie this back to our larger resiliency plan. And that's kind of how we got to it. Right now the network, again, we do have to tap into the large providers, there's not that many in our community. We only have maybe access to maybe two. So we tap into that. And then again, we broadcast that. So essentially, we raise funds so that we can continue to do that. A lot of the young people that are using it, again are using it for school now. Obviously we know during COVID, it's a huge need.

Danny Peralta: 40% of our community doesn't have access to it. So being able to look for the ability to sustain it, hopefully create opportunities within it. One of the things that the Point has always done since we started was that we were incubating small businesses. And to think about entrepreneurship or think again about social enterprise. And so hopefully this is a vehicle for that as well. To hopefully leave it to some sort of sustainability. We also work in amazing partnership. I'm going to say, I'm going to shout out the folks from CTNY, Community Tech New York. Some of those people that came out, that formerly came from New America, I mean, amazing ability to think about this work and try to draw resources to it and bring people together. What we realize is that our community network is only as strong as the network next to ours.

Danny Peralta: And if the communities next to ours can also have access to this type of technology and also build their own resilient networks in case of an emergency, can communicate with them. These are the things that we work toward. And again, we spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to sustain the network so we can keep it going. But also with this idea that one of these days we can start to actually own those lines. And we think about fiber, we think about infrastructure and how to kind of have a stake in that. Not just to watch it get built and then tap into, but really be kind of at the root of it and change those dynamics a little bit. And offer, instead of some funky fine print, offer some big, large print about what the Internet is for and what you're signing on for when you get onto it.

Danny Peralta: And that's the ultimate goal. But essentially right now, again, we're tapping into existing lines and using the networks that we have. Again, we're really, it's a mission where all these beings are kind of talking to each other one after the other. And that's the idea is that by not only putting in this infrastructure, we're also training individuals. And like I mentioned, we have the staff that runs it now, we have about four individuals and they're all community members. Again, all of them trained by us, that are now leading the program. That replication of that kind of team and other communities again, has amazing ramifications for what's possible. Our folks are able to, if a node goes down, service it within 24 hours. They get a direct phone call from the individual who's, you're not on a waiting list to get your service fixed up.

10:14

Danny Peralta: They're working with populations again, that are traditionally, highly underserved. Seniors living in senior centers that don't have good access to the Internet because of the way that the building lives. Bringing in nodes, booster nodes. Really kind of, figure out how to augment even what exists now as a way to reach people. And again, seniors usually are the last ones to get this service. We talk about the vibe between young people. There's even a bigger gap with seniors in our community and being able again, to offer that basic conversation, that basic amenity, where we can not only fix their Internet and get them up online, but also develop a relationship in case there is an emergency. We can go back and visit them. We can tie them back to food services and voting. That's a big deal right now with trying to make sure everybody votes. All that kind of engagement and it's all based on these people's desire initially to tap into the Internet.

Danny Peralta: And again, at least to other things and other ways for us to organize it, it really is an organizing tool for us. It's not just, like I said, a way for people just to go online. It is definitely that, but we really try to infuse it with education and like I said, opportunities for employment, stewardship and creativity also. Hopefully some artists are tapping into it and making some interesting things during this time, especially.

Christopher Mitchell: Yes. Now this, the art work I know is always close to your heart. And I want to make sure we touch on that in a minute. But first I want to give people a little bit more of a picture. The people that live here, there's not a lot of single family homes, right? Like this is a... [Crosstalk 00:11:52].

Danny Peralta: Yep.

Christopher Mitchell: ... part of the Bronx that is heavily industrialized. I think you probably face much higher rates of childhood asthma and pollution and challenges like that. So this is a community which has been in many ways, overlooked by the power structures and is sort of ignored. And so you're trying to connect them with Internet access, but that's part of this larger mission of making sure that these people are able to make meaningful decisions in their lives and have really full, happy lives. Right?

12:20

Danny Peralta: Yeah. And I think you mentioned some stats. Like we typically tend to be, again, especially when you're looking for health outcomes, we tend to be at the bottom of all of those lists. If it's a good list, we're at the bottom. If it's a bad list, we're at the top. And again, that's a narrative that is not because people are not doing good work. The Point, a lot of our partners, again, people have, generations of work into this... There's a larger again, vision at played by how this neighborhood gets used. And again, because it is largely industrial, because there is a lot of food coming to it and because it has been used traditionally also for waste management, like 40% of the city's waste comes here.

Danny Peralta: If you could imagine a city like New York City, millions of people, 40% of the waste coming into one neighborhood. You're talking about again, a food market, 15, 20,000 diesel trucks a day coming through. And then you're talking about also now, the proliferation, honestly, of last mile e-commerce moving into our neighbors. So now as opposed to big 18 wheelers, we have all of these smaller like sprinter kind of things. Unmarked, that are just zooming by adding more traffic. We're surrounded by highways. Again, if you kind of look at our neighbor, you think, why would people live there and how do they survive there? How do they thrive there? What is it that happens? And, and one part of it is cultural, I think. I think that stats are stats. People collect all kinds of data. If you ask me per capita, how many let's say, stewards there are for the environment, I'm going to point to per capita, there's probably more people that know how to work the land and grow food at Hunts Point than other neighborhoods in, let's say, New York City, I don't know.

Danny Peralta: So the stats are always skewed. We're asset based. So we really, again, we really dig deep into these cultural richness that we have around us. The language, the way that the immigrants come from their nations and they have these skills. That, for example, like our mesh network. The young man who engineers it, he comes from a very rural place in Peru where they have no access to Internet. Where the Internet came just very recently to them. So they're solving real time problems in their countries. They're coming here for opportunities. And they're adding that to the work that we do. That type of level of tenacity that urgency to see something done. To make something where there's probably, people don't see anything. And that's really key kind of, to the way that we've been approaching the work.

14:51

Danny Peralta: But again, it is really how we define ourselves. We're artists, we're activists, we're organizers, we're educators, we're family members. That's kind of how we talk about our work and really describe our community. Again, because that's kind of the cornerstones of where we work from. And people talk a lot about the green movement and urban farming. A lot of that, especially New York was born in these kinds of communities. When people said, we're going to take this part of land that was an abandoned building, and we're going to grow food and that's the farming movement in New York. Again, where there's no parks, Hunts Point is a perfect example. There are two water from parks that are less than 15 years old.

Danny Peralta: So you can imagine a neighborhood, that's been there for generations has two parks now that are less than 15 years old. That means that if you're 30 years old, you grew up half of your life without a park in your neighborhood. But that was built by the community. That was people reclaiming land, brown fields and saying, look, we're going to get resources and put a park here. And we're going to get access to the waterfront and we're going to learn how to canoe and swim so that we can actually be in the waterfront and be prepared for what happens for living in the waterfront. Which is something that typically where we're not. And so these are the things that we kind of build off of, this is the energy that we utilize in our day to day work. And that data might not up anywhere in fancy reports, but it's really a springboard for projects like these to survive and to thrive, I would say, and continue to have an impact. Regardless if it's a huge impact but like a day to day, a real practical impact for a lot of people.

Christopher Mitchell: Tell me about the role that art has played in this because I don't know, I feel like a lot of people that haven't been around different social movements, haven't read the history, might think of art as kind of like a nice to have. Kind of like a thing that emerges when you have more affluence. But when we met at the tribal wireless bootcamp earlier in the summer, you were talking about some amazing art projects that have helped people to reclaim space, to make it safer, to have these other impacts in the community.

Danny Peralta: Definitely. Yeah. when you think about how community, again, like Hunts Point operates, if you don't have the economics, like you said, what is art? For us, especially culturally, we just kind of, I don't know, the way you move, the way you talk, the way you dress, is all tied to these cultural phenomenon. And if you think about the place of hip hop, right? Being born, let's say in the Bronx. Which is where people kind of talk about it. There's this thread where people are constantly making things and they're always building on this world that's around them. And that's kind of the spirit of it. And so that's the cultural movement that we kind of work with. When you have, like I said, little, maybe socioeconomic, but you're very creative and you can maybe make a record and sample, like a two second snippet and turn it into a million dollar song.

17:54

Danny Peralta: That's the spirit of it. And that's kind of how everything, I would say, springboards. A lot of the self-esteem that we get, I would say, the place that you can meet people halfway, oftentimes is in these creative spaces. Is where people get to play and explore and try things that maybe are childish. But again, bring them back kind of to a space where they're vulnerable and they're creative and they're kind of letting themself, their guards down and they're using it for therapy and healing and all these things are important to why we do a beautification. I'm going to mention now, a lot of the mural movements in our community, again, it's about beautifying, right? Spaces that are blight, that we don't want to look at anymore. And you put a, a mural of a local hero or you paint a sign that says, I love my neighborhood.

Danny Peralta: It has ramifications on how people move and how they respect the spaces and what they're willing to steward. And that's really the power of art. And for myself, if not for my artistic practice and searching for an artistic voice, I wouldn't have found these movements that are tied to culture, but really are environmental and social and use art to make a claim and to make a ask. A plea, if you will, to the world to listen. A call to action, if you will. And that's the space that art occupies at the Point, and I would say a lot of organizations similar to ours and individuals that we know in our community.

Christopher Mitchell: Now, do you remember, we talked about this, it came back to telecommunications in one way, because I feel like, I don't remember maybe it was you. Or maybe it was someone else, talked about inviting people to do art, to develop visual art on pieces of telecommunications in the neighborhood. Do you remember how that came up?

Danny Peralta: Yeah. I remember how it came up, but I mean, I think the idea that we can actually paint these things, that we can actually mount them and make it service murals too. It's not just like this a device that again, you plug into that's invisible, but that we make these things visible. And I think, again, I think that's part of that whole disillusion of magic. Of these devices that sit there, that you don't know what they're doing. Because the signal cutting through them and they're invisible. And we take them for granted, I think, because they're invisible. They're sitting on a rooftop. If you add something to it, maybe you might bring attention to it.

20:13

Danny Peralta: Maybe you can use them as another device to, again, to draw attention to somebody. I love the idea of naming devices after maybe local heroes that do the human connection, and maybe we can name a node after them because that's kind of what they serve. So yeah, I think there are some interesting ramifications. Some of the young men that we're working with, they're building video games into the PNK these portable network kits that are designed for emergency deployment and again, using it as a creative space. Like these server spaces, where typically there's a lot of data. Why can't we do other things with it? Why can't we add music to it or add visuals to it or when we build up PNK out create a whole cultural museum in there that if people are out of power for a couple of days and all they have is this PNK and they want to learn about the Bronx, is this whole history lesson that comes into it. So it's a tool and it could be.

Danny Peralta: And I think that the more we demystify touching these machines, like traveling this wireless boot camp, it was amazing watching people try to connect these things. And even that little, slight half a inch to the left, messes up your signal and being in that space that you can do that. And again, demystifying what these devices do and owning them to a certain degree, is very powerful and it's very needed. And I think it's going to be the way. That's how I see, I think that's how hip hop was kind of born.

Danny Peralta: Somebody had access to it and they kind of took it left field and they said, this is what we're going to do with it. And now it's it own thing. And I think there's a space for that. And I know people are doing it. I've seen it. With technology, especially with wireless technology and communication to technology, to be very creative. And that's the space that personally, I like to see it. Because I think it has some more interesting ramifications, but also because I think that there's, that's where everything is going anyways. So we might as well start to be a part of this burgeoning for economy, this burgeoning artistic movement that lives in these spaces. Why not?

Christopher Mitchell: Let me ask you more about the PNKs. So what I'm imagining in my head is you've got a number of teens, tough looking kind of kids raised in difficult circumstances. You're in a room and you have a suitcase with a bunch of networking gear in it that you're calling a portable network kit. What exactly is happening here? Why is this interesting?

22:32

Danny Peralta: Well, the portable network kit, if you could imagine is like a box. You can make it out of anything. Essentially, you have a router, you have your power, your antenna, and you have your raspberry pie in there. And you want to make a connection between either two PNKs or again, the larger net. And again, these are totally communication devices that are really designed again, in case there is no Internet. Or again, you want to really create a mesh network that is secure. Because if I can have two PNKs talk to each other within one server, then you're communicating hopefully, securely. But again, one on one and for us, it's like, if we could put this into the young people's hands, what would they do with it?

Danny Peralta: What would they build out of it? And the guys that we have, they're not even tough looking. To be honest with you, they're kind of like geeky [crosstalk 00:23:20] on the block. That's why they mess with the tech, right? They're not that intimidating looking per se. They may come from some interesting circumstances but they're definitely geeks. And they're like, you know what, we're gamers. How do we turn this into a gaming device?

Christopher Mitchell: That's what I wanted to hear too. Because I just, I feel like when you, when we describe places that are difficult to live or people are maybe working all the time or not able to work. It's just, you generally picture these kids and you forget that they're kids. They're all over the place, like in terms of interests [crosstalk 00:23:53]

Danny Peralta: Yeah, 100%. And, again, we attract at the Point, we're open to everybody. So we get all kinds of young people from all kinds of walks of life. And obviously the ones that are attracted to this project are the ones that are the gamers and the guys that are up all night building apps and stuff like that for fun. And really, just because they want experiment and are interested in cybersecurity, like Wes is, who's very heavily interested in that and securing everything. Like he's worried about everybody, trying to tap into our system the wrong way. But realistically. This is not a game for him. This is part of his passion and being able to come up again, provide a space for that.

Danny Peralta: It's kind of impressive. It's important. I don't know if you really know the full ramifications of this project yet. It's going to probably play out I think in a couple of years when we know where we see where these folks are and the rest of the folks are that are a part of the network to really get a sense for how this had an impact on them. But that's the idea is that if you have access to something and if it's something that you can, again, safely play with for a while, you will develop something interesting. And I've seen with this team right now, they've developed two amazing apps that are key I think for how a PNK works.

25:08

Danny Peralta: Because a lot of the stuff that when the PNK was developed again, it's open source so the people that developed the first iterations, they don't ever readapt them. They don't upgrade these things. And so sometimes they stop working. So when we got the PNK, some of those apps that were in there for let's say, messaging, some of the server spaces, again, they were kind of outdated. They weren't really functional. We couldn't really operate them. The team has spent the last year building these things from scratch so that they can have a version for us, at least ready, and then again, they can offer to others. So now, they created this thing called echo and chat echo. And it's freaking amazing though, Chris, I don't even know how to put it to you. This is where they're going. Being able to create hardware and software that lives with this portable network, that becomes a part of our larger community network.

Danny Peralta: That's the nugget. Besides what we're doing, that's what's going to be the game changer ultimately. And I want to give them more credit. I want them to, I want them to live up to that inventor title. I want to push for that with them because they've invented something that is unique. And I think if we went off to try to trademark it for what it's worth, they can do that legitimately. Because it is built from scratch and it is rather new. And that's the stuff that we want to see with this kind of project ultimately. It's not expected for market.

Christopher Mitchell: So let's wrap up with the discussion about some of the realities of this, because you had two contradicting points earlier on in terms of the goal of just getting people online so they can be together. We all dream that people are going to use the Internet to improve their lives and be happier and things like that. And then in reality, people, they start developing unhealthy feelings about their body. And obviously this happens from television too. It's not unique to the Internet.

Danny Peralta: Yeah, it's media.

Christopher Mitchell: But clearly Instagram is having a major impact on specific, on young women in particular. And so I'm curious, how do you handle this when you have, I think you've got people that are so hungry for Internet access and you want to make sure that they're able to do it. You don't want to lock it down, but you also got to help them learn some skills and how to use it in a healthy manner. So how do you do that?

Danny Peralta: Definitely. Yeah. And that's where the digital steward training academy comes in. And again, I'm going to give credit to our folks at CTNY and our folks from Detroit digital justice network, because they really planted in our minds this idea that, what is the Internet? That was the question that they keep posing very early on and we thought, okay, the Internet is da, da, da. And then as you kind of, as they keep posing the question, you kind of start to dig deeper. What really is it? And how do we really use it? And is it... And the question that we've been posing within our group is do we use the Internet or does it use us? Because it got to that point where our data's being siphoned off, it's being sold back to us.

27:49

Danny Peralta: We're not fully even seeing the full Internet based on what you are looking for. You might not even see a certain, let's say link, because it doesn't fit into whatever profile somebody created for you. Why some algorithm in your account. These are the things that we're questioning right now. And I think offering a space to create that question, what is the Internet? And it's cool to see people kind of question it and start to be critical about not only the Internet as a device and as a system, but they're role in it. That's where it is. And again, it's not about making people jump off the Internet and reclaim and say, this is bogus, but really to create a space for dialogue and a critique of what it is. Good or bad, what is it?

Danny Peralta: And creating that space. I think we don't offer too much of those spaces. People say you got access to Internet. Great. You're good. You can do what you got to do. We rarely question what's going on. And I think more recently we probably have been. Again because of COVID and how much time we spend on these devices. And again, these reports that we're seeing about the health effects. We should question it. So if I'm telling people to question food, how are you getting food in your system? So we can do some urban farming and dispel that. Then this is kind of the same process. It's really just getting people to a basic, like a level zero, depending on where your skill levels at and let's have this dialogue.

Danny Peralta: And then from there, you do what you got to do. But I will say that I think that people that come to our digital stewardship training, especially the young people, they probably walk out of there with a stronger sense of how to use it and how to use it responsibly and what the effects potentially could be if you're not really paying attention to it. And that's all we can hold for ultimately. Like I said, it's going to play out at some point in what the ramifications of that are and the results of that are. But it's good to have that dialogue, especially when you're offering this Internet. Yes, that it's a double edge sword, we have to think that way. It's very important.

Christopher Mitchell: Well, I think this has been a great dialogue in itself. I really appreciate you coming on, sharing all the knowledge that you guys have built up and I'm excited. We're going to hopefully find more ways to have events together and share knowledge across these different communities. So I know that, you know this already, but folks in the tribal wireless bootcamp loved hearing the examples of how you all are dealing with building power and taking some of those ideas back and just trying to get different communities together to see. Well, they have so much in common.

30:17

Danny Peralta: Yeah. Likewise. All communities, I think this is the time to kind of think that way. Where, how are we a community and how do our communities connect? And how do we learn from each other very pivotal time. So thank you for this Chris and for the dialogue and for the continuous dialogue. For always reaching out. Appreciate you, bro.

Christopher Mitchell: Yeah. Thank you. Have a great day.

Danny Peralta: You too, man. Peace, bro.

Ry Marcattilio-McCracken: We have transcripts for this and other podcasts available at muninetworks.org/broadband bits. Email us at podcast@muninetworks.org with your ideas for the show. Follow Chris on Twitter, his handle is @communitynets, follow muninetworks.org stories on Twitter. The handle is @muninetworks. Subscribe to this and other podcast from ILSR, including building local power, local energy rules and the composting for community podcast. You can access them anywhere you get your podcasts. You can catch the latest important research from all of our initiatives. If you subscribe to our monthly newsletter at ilsr.org. While you're there, please take a moment to donate. Your support in any amount keeps us going. Thank you to Arnie Yusby for the song, warm duck shuffle, licensed through creative commons. This was the Community Broadband Bits podcast. Thanks for listening.