Info districts could enshrine COVID-19 mutual aid networks into policy and everyday life
Info districts could enshrine COVID-19 mutual aid networks into policy and everyday life
NINA WEINGRILL · APRIL 10, 2020
Members of the Papo Reto Collective put up posters in Morro do Alemão, Rio de Janeiro, to alert the community. (Photo by Bento Fábio.)
What is the use of having someone tell you to wash your hands if there is barely enough water in your house? The priorities of those living through COVID-19 in Leblon, a rich neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, are radically different from those who live in Maré, one of the city’s largest favelas. The importance of having people produce information in the service of those around them is clearer now, more than ever. The truth is that it matters little what the president says - especially if you live in Brazil – when your local community has the real story.
In São Paulo, local groups are responding to information needs through collectives like Periferia em Movimento and Agência Mural in the suburbs, small neighborhood organizations like Embarque no Direito with their own newspapers, condominiums associations sharing information via Whatsapp, and community groups using Facebook to mobilize COVID-19 response. Each has its own methodology for producing and distributing information that’s prioritizing needs: from access to sanitation to food and basic hygiene items.
People are organizing in their communities to oversee power (public and private) and assist each other by providing the basic information their community needs. What if, after we are done with coronavirus, this was our reality? What if we could enshrine these new networks in public policy?
In partnership with the Community Information Cooperative, Énois has translated a guide to doing just that. "How to Launch an Info District,” now available in Portuguese here, outlines how to launch and sustain publicly funded local information cooperatives.
Its needed because more than 37 million Brazilians live in news deserts without access to quality local news and information. Where media outlets remain, many are on the verge of extinction: 331 newspapers have shut down since 2011 – largely due to financial difficulties. And survivors are often financed by politicians and their parties and do not represent the interests of their communities.
“How to Launch an Info District” challenges us to imagine how we can build upon the mutual aid networks responding to COVID-19. It offers a framework for permanently strengthening our communities by imagining ways to democratize information beyond access. Through info districts, people could finance information production through participatory and public budgets. They could play a role in news gathering and decision making. They could create local information ecosystems that serve their needs first.
It is not a distant illusion, as I’ve written previously here, and not a novel idea. Free media activists have long waved this flag.
But what the Community Information Cooperative offers in “How to Launch an Info District” is a compilation of different tools and methodologies that prepares organizers to work with communities to democratize their information ecosystems. It gives a shape and a name to the future we hope for and I hope that this material can inspire new actions for you as it has done for me.
“How to Launch an Info District” is available in Portuguese and English here.
Nina Weingrill is the co-founder of Énois and its Escola de Jornalismo, Brazil’s largest free youth journalism school.