Microsoft Research Podcast - 134 - Just Tech: Centering Community-Driven Innovation at the Margins episode 2 with Dr. Tawanna Dillahunt, Zachary Rowe, and Joanna Velazquez

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

In “Just Tech: Centering Community-Driven Innovation at the Margins,” Senior Principal Researcher Mary Gray explores how technology and community intertwine and the role technology can play in supporting community-driven innovation and community-based organizations. Dr. Gray and her team are working to bring computer science, engineering, social science, and community together to boost societal resilience in ongoing work with Project Resolve. She’ll talk with organizers, academics, technology leaders, and activists to understand how to develop tools and frameworks of support alongside members of these communities. In this episode of the series, Dr. Gray talks with Dr. Tawanna Dillahunt, Associate Professor at University of Michigan’s School of Information, Zachary Rowe, Executive Director of Friends of Parkside, and Joanna Velazquez, Campaign Manager at Detroit Action. The guests share personal experiences where community and research collaborations have been most impactful in solving problems, talk about ways that participatory research can foster equal partnerships and fuel innovation, and offer perspectives on how researchers can best work with communities to work through problems at a local level. They also discuss the role that technology plays—and doesn’t play—in their work.https://www.microsoft.com/research

Welcome to the Microsoft Research Podcast Series, Just Tech, centering community-driven innovation at the margins. I'm Mary Gray, a Senior Principal Researcher at our New England Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I use my training as an anthropologist and communication media scholar to study people's everyday uses of technology. In March 2020, I took all that I'd learned about app-driven services that deliver everything from groceries to telehealth to study how a coalition of community-based organizations in North Carolina

might develop better tech to deliver the basic needs and health support to those hit hardest by the pandemic. Our research together, called Project Resolve, aims to create a new approach to community-driven innovation, one that brings computer science, engineering, the social sciences, and community expertise together to accelerate the roles that communities and technologies could play in boosting societal resilience. For this podcast, I'll be talking with researchers, activists, and nonprofit leaders about the promises and challenges of what it means to build technology with rather than for society. My guests today are Zachary Rowe, Joanna Velasquez, and Dr. Tawana

Dillahunt. Tawana Dillahunt is an associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Information, working at the intersection of human-computer interaction, environmental, economic, and social sustainability, and equity. Tawana Velasquez is a campaign manager at Detroit Action, a union of black and brown, low and no-income, homeless, and housing insecure Detroiters fighting for housing and economic justice. And Zachary Rowe is the executive director of Friends of Parkside, a not-for-profit community-based organization dedicated to working with residents and other stakeholders to better the community surrounding the Detroit Public Housing Complex in which it's located. Tawana, Joanna, Zachary, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. Thanks for having us, Mary. So glad to be here. Yes, thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having us, Mary. So glad to be here. Yes, thank you. Thank you. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you're here. So I want to start us off thinking about what you believe you're involved in when you say

you're involved in community-based work. So I want us to start by really defining some terms and seeing the range of how we think about this work we call community-driven innovation, community engagement. I'd like to ask each of you to tell us a little bit about how you got involved in community-based work, broadly defined, not just the tech piece of it, but what brought you into community-based work? Let me start with Dr. Dillahunt. Sure, Mary. Thanks so much for that question. You know, when I think about this, I think about my upbringing in North Carolina,

very small town in North Carolina. So it was very community-focused, community-oriented. And my grandfather was a farmer. Him and his wife owned a country store in which, you know, I worked in. So they were really serving the community, jobs in the community my dad was a contractor so built a lot of the homes in our neighborhood my mom as a retired school teacher and my sister wrote grants in the community as a part of the public housing community and she kind of brought me into that work as well so I feel like I was born and raised into community it's a part of my DNA. I love the part of your DNA. So let me turn the question to you, Zachary Rowe. What got you involved in community-based work? That's a great question. And I was just sort of listening to Tawana and how my upbringing also positioned me to be involved in community-based work. For me, growing up in

public housing, one of the things that I realized early on is the perception of young folks who lived in public housing, which, you know, a lot of times, 99.9% of the time, you know, folks had a negative perception of kids who lived in public housing. So I remember my friends and I, we were not like that perception. I'm not sure why I came up with this idea to change the perception. But we started to do a lot of volunteer work in the community. One of the things that was happening in the community is that we had a lot of boarded up units in the neighborhood. And so, you know, we connected with an adult and he bought the paint and we painted all the boarded up units a single color and when you think about it doesn't really make sense but it made a major difference in the community it was still boarded up it was still

paint but it made a difference you know it also sent a message that people cared then we started to do other things in the neighborhood, you know, started to have parties for kids and whatnot. And we even received an award from the city council. And so for me, just how I got started in community work had to do with changing the perception of young folks. So how about you, Joanna Velasquez? Yes, this is a lovely question to kick us off. You know, similar to Twana, I feel like this is what we bonded on a little bit as we like got to know each other's like being born into community and just knowing how valuable like relationships are. My mom and my sisters and I moved to Detroit

when I was five in October of 2000. And that was a really important moment in our life because as a single mom, it was community that got us by. It was our pretend aunts and cousins that, you know, to outsiders it's pretend, but to us it's real. You build these beautiful spaces that are just full of love and joy and it's community that did that. You know, my grandma was in the Southwest area and like everyone knew her. She was the neighborhood babysitter. So just like having these examples that community was super important is what followed me in life and started volunteering at a very young age, kept it going, got me through college, and now I'm here. So.

So, okay, I would love to turn to each of you and just hear what's a project you're working on right now or a campaign that's important to you that you're most excited about sharing with listeners who are tuning into this program. So let me start with you, Zachary. Can you tell us a bit about what you're working on that you want to bring to our listeners? One of the projects that I'm working on is what we call our Community Tech Worker Project. It's loosely modeled after the Community Health Worker Project. And I'm excited because one of the things that it does for me is that it gives me an opportunity to match my love of technology

with my nine-to-five job. In my other life, I have a small computer consulting business, and so I always wanted to be able to connect the two. And so the Community Tech Worker Project is allowing me to be able to share my passion for technology with residents. And also it's doing it on a level that makes sense. So we're meeting them where they are.

I'm excited. Can you say a little bit more about who you're meeting and where they're at when you're meeting them? So basically, I think in order to understand the Community Tech Worker Project the way I envision it, it's probably helpful just maybe talk about the who we're talking about. So Friends of Parkside is a small community-based organization located in Detroit in one of the public housing sites in Detroit called the Villages of Parkside. And it was started by residents of the housing complex. And so the who that we're talking about is public housing residents.

And when you talk about the digital divide or the lack of sort of digital skills, I mean, you're talking about, you know, my community. And you're probably talking about other communities across the country. And so with the Community Tech Record Project, what it allows us to do is to be able to help residents develop basic computer skills so they can turn around and help other residents. Some people call it the train-the-trainers model or whatnot, but for us, it's reach one to teach one kind of thing. Antwana, can you just share a bit about what you're working on and what the connections are to Zachary and Joanna? I'm very much excited about the Community Tech Workers Project for the same reason that Zachary mentioned, except I'm kind of a full-time professor and I'm able to combine my passion of the community

with my kind of full-time job. So I see the Community Tech Workers Project as an opportunity to create a new position within a community that hopefully we can sustain over the long-term. Our team imagines that perhaps those community tech workers who want to pursue a longer-term career in let's say, technology can train as a community tech worker and then, you know, move on to maybe even jobs in IT. And then, again, with the train to trainer model, have more tech workers

who are embedded in the community. And so we've, you know, extended this project to support entrepreneurs. So Professor Julie Hoy and I are partnering with Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project at Michigan and creating, again, capacity in the community, more tech workers to support small business owners who might need support with their businesses. I'll add the work that, you know, we've done with Joanna and Detroit Action is really thinking about models and mechanisms to create opportunities for the community to imagine ways in which technology can support them. So imagining a future, it could be utopian future, it could be, you know, in our activity, we also did dystopian futures, and thinking about what are the community values and what are the community

strengths and what are opportunities for technology to leverage both strengths and values to move toward the futures that the community imagined. So this is a way to bring the community's perceptions into what technology can do instead of kind of enforcing our technologist lens, you know, what we think might be nice, but it's a way to bring the voices of the community in to our process. Joanna, would you tell us a little bit about work that you're doing? Yes, yes, yes, yes. So I actually, I want to pick it up a little bit from work between Twana and I covering the Alternative Economy series. That five-week series was so incredible. And like Twana had said, it allowed folks to vision and allowed folks to imagine what would they want if they could get their most perfect world where their needs were met and,

you know, folks around them had what they needed as well. We created a space to meet folks where they're at, but also like, let's think together, let's imagine together. And why that's so important and how we did that was because it activated our members to tap into our Agenda for a New Economy. And so that's the current work that we've got going on right now. I'm very excited about this campaign because it's an entire platform that is aiming to address the root causes of poverty, the root causes of injustice. And really from a community driven and community organizing and civic engagement point of view of how to get this agenda for a new economy forward. And it was because we had that visioning that we were able to continue to build with our members afterward to allow them to guide this work, to develop this campaign. And then we launched it in December. And then come

this year, what's really exciting is that this past Saturday we actually just had a people's forum and part of the agenda for new economy is getting reparations for folks who have been illegally foreclosed on due to over assessments here in the city on property taxes and even those who are currently homeowners but still dealing with the over assessments in property taxes we had over 700 community members call into a Zoom session this past Saturday to meet with the entire city council. These city council members were able to listen and hear directly from these impacted folks on their stories, on what they think is right, how they want compensation to look. Is it home repairs? Is it property tax credits? Is it

creating systems to support families who have dealt with this crisis? You know, there's emotional and mental trauma that is carried with this moving forward. And so it was so beautiful to see the community coming together. And so that is a part of the agenda for a new economy, these pieces that address the root causes. And so I'm excited to see how much more people power we can grow around this campaign to get wins that actually create change. Wow. So I want to back up a second. Tell us a bit more about a recent collaboration where you felt technology was an important tool, but it was really the community organizing and the community engagement that was the magic of what you were doing. Let me start with you, Joanna. Yeah, so I will say this entire pandemic experience, having to completely transition

online, limited to only a few different times in which you were able to be in person, like technology has definitely shown up for us in a way that it's allowed us to recreate our organizing infrastructure online and still create places for folks to tap into to help guide the work, to be directly involved with these campaigns, whether it's division with us and spend time in our committee meetings. It's allowed us to maintain our infrastructure. And I will say that's the biggest plus to it. And it's even allowed us to tap into folks that maybe were only living online. Definitely a big learning lesson is how do we continue to create online spaces? Digital organizing was a

part of our work before, but it's definitely become much more centered to the way that we're reaching folks and how we're thinking about reaching folks and the intentionality that comes behind it. But I will say the magic comes from the fact that when in those spaces, our folks are able to tap in. And so I would just say like technology's biggest support has been about maintaining our infrastructure to keep meeting with folks. But it's definitely within the meeting that the magic happens. Yeah, it's almost it feels like you're mainstreaming a way of using these tools for community action that maybe we didn't see so deeply before. Zachary, can I ask you a bit about like what's a collaboration you're involved in now that you really feel shows you the important role technology can play,

but really its supporting role for the community organizing that you're doing? Prior to sort of COVID or the COVID experience, we had limited use for technology only because, you know, our residents had limited technology. So technology really wasn't a big component of what we do and how we do it kind of thing. We were sort of old school, sort of the face-to-face meetings, phone calls, flyers, those kinds of things. But when COVID hit, I mean, that caused most all nonprofits to have to sort of pivot and rethink the way that they sort of engage community. And we were one of those. But I think for us, it was harder because our infrastructure was not in place to actually do that. And probably even more importantly, our residents was not, you know, in a place where

they sort of do that. So for us, you know, there was a lot of trying to take care of the basics, you know, do you have the internet? Do you have a device? Do you know how to use the device? So for us, it was a big learning curve in terms of the work. And don't get me wrong, we're not there yet. We're not there yet, but we're on the way. And one of the things that Tawana and I both talked about was the Community Tech Worker Project, which came out of that. So I tell folks, never let a good crisis go to waste, right? And so within that COVID environment experience, I mean, we were able to sort of re-envision or re-imagine what this community can sort of be. Back in 2000, we actually envisioned a community where everyone had technology, everyone sort of connected and using technology for work and for entertainment.

We envisioned this. It just wasn't possible. The technology wasn't there yet. And also, I remember, you know, a year and a half ago, I actually emailed Tawana sort of saying, hey, don't you want to change the world? And so fortunately, she responded, and we've been working to at least change the world in Parkside. The magic for me is just working with residents to sort of see how they begin to realize that, yes, they can learn how to do this, right? Sometimes it's as simple as connecting to a Zoom meeting on their own without any help. Yeah.

So, Tawana, please share with us, what are some of these collaborations? And I can see perhaps two of the co-conspirators that you work with, but maybe you want to share a bit more about what you're working on these days that's exciting to you. Yeah, so definitely the most exciting projects you've heard about from Zachary and Joanna. Other projects, it's a collaboration with my colleague, Professor Tiffany Vino, and a collaborator, Patrick Shee at Indiana University Bloomington. I mentioned earlier that a lot of my work is around employment, and one barrier to employment is transportation. At least in Detroit,

before COVID, transportation was a significant barrier. And we began asking the question, you know, how are people overcoming the transportation barriers now, and how can technology amplify what it is that they're doing already. And we thought of new models for transportation because I had done work where we onboarded people to Uber and technology was a barrier, right? They needed intermediaries to help them install the application and create a login account. Some people didn't have credit cards, right? And so what are ways in which we can overcome those technological barriers? Again, we're seeing this need for intermediaries.

And Patrick Shee has done a lot of work with time banking. And we've seen how people are using time banks to share cars, share pickup trucks for moving, to get rides to the airport or to the grocery store or to healthcare appointments or to work. So right now we're looking at how do we think about trust and reciprocity and safety within a time bank context to overcome transportation barriers and looking at ways to update or build that. And again, thinking about who the intermediaries might be in providing this type of support. So that's another exciting project that I have going on. So definitely all of you innovate, you activate, you organize communities. And I'm just wondering if you could share with us

what community innovation means to you. What does it look like on the ground to you? And let me maybe start with Tawana. Yeah, I think that's a great question. And I think I can start from Zachary's introduction where he talked about being a kid and thinking about the perceptions of the kids who live in public housing. And they said, hey, we want to change this perception. Innovation is painting the buildings. To me, that's innovation innovation is is Zachary saying hey you want to change the world right like how do we go about building capacity in a community right how do we think through this community tech workers you know concept what does that look like right is the community coming together with the challenge that they're facing, bringing people together to work towards

addressing that. No hierarchy, nothing, just sheer innovation, sheer problems of it. I love that. I love that because I feel like you're setting up for us that, you know, technology is really about creation. So what does it look like when people create together? So Zachary, for you, could you just say a bit about how do you define community innovation especially when you're explaining it to folks who maybe don't see how technology would fit into that so I think for me just in terms of innovation one of the things that we're always trying to do is solve problems for the most part usually when you're innovating it's because of. You're doing it for a reason. It's not like you're sitting there sort of saying, oh, I'm going to

innovate today. Okay, let me tell a story. So we had kids that was working with us for the summer. Every other day, they had to pass off flyers. And so they got tired of passing off flyers. And I said, wait, if you guys can come up with a better way of getting the word out, I'm listening. Right. They came up with the idea of sending out text messages sometime about 10 years ago. Right now, the challenge with sending out text messages is that, you know, I really didn't know a lot about sending out text messages. And also I was concerned about the cost. Right. But they realized that they can use Gmail to send out text messages because with Gmail, you use the phone number and the carrier and it comes on your phone as a text message. For me, that was really innovative. They had a problem that they want to solve, which meant that they didn't want to pass out the flyers, but they want to get the word out. And also there was this cost factor that they had to sort of think through.

But that was really creative, you know? I love that. And Joanne, I wonder if you have some examples of just where you've seen folks innovate by really repurposing the tools that are there and where you see room for communities being able to set an agenda for what to do with technologies, how to repurpose them to meet their needs. It's about, yeah, addressing a problem, right? Like,

that's where people get creative. It's like something needs to happen. Every action has reaction, right? This, you know, this kind of happens a lot, but like really organically, right? Really organically, because for me, it happens in a one-to-one where like I'm having a conversation with the member and they're talking to me about, you know, what's their issue, what's going on, you know, what's really getting at you that you needed to change. And so our folks will share these stories and then we'll get to a point where it's like, well, what do you want to do about it? How do we change it? That is when we start talking about strategy. And so I don't know if that exactly is like repurposing anything other

than just like very critical thinking and like open conversation and dialogue with folks. So that's to me is like how our folks really show and are active in like community innovation with the work because it's in a one-on-one where you are finding the real solutions to the problems, to the real problems that they're actually facing. You're bringing up for me how often in computer science and engineering, the holy grail, the mantra is scale, scale up, scale up. And what I hear you saying is like part of something being powerful and useful is also getting down to that nitty gritty. It's getting down to understanding like from, you know, one person at a time, the power of that change. And then you've got 700 people, like you were saying, showing up at a call.

I mean, that's I think that's really powerful and an important intervention, maybe a course correction for how we think about what success looks like when we're engaging communities. I want to ask you all, and I wanted to direct this to Zachary and Tawana, to maybe talk about the community tech worker projects that you're doing and the challenges and also the opportunities that you're seeing coming out of that work. It strikes me as a good example of just that grappling with both how you scale, but how you keep it real, where it's meaningful scaling. So if I could ask Zachary, would you tell us a bit about the Community Tech Worker Project and just set up for us, what is it you're trying to do? What are you aiming for? Where are there places where you're hitting some hurdles and working through them? The Community Tech Worker

Project for me was an attempt to solve a problem. Earlier, I talked about the fact that during the COVID pandemic, we realized that our residents didn't have access to technology, and those who did have access to technology didn't have the internet. If they did have the internet, they didn't have the skill. So the Community Tech Worker Project was a way for us to begin to address those kinds of issues. One of the things that we realized is that the kind of skills that most people take for granted in terms of being able to use Zoom, being able to use email, being able to upload documents to me, for the most part, some of us take those things for granted,

but there was a whole community of folks that did not have those skills, right? There was even a subpopulation that really didn't have those skills. I'm talking about our seniors. And so what the Community Tech Worker Project allowed us to do is begin to identify folks from the neighborhood who were interested in learning how to be community tech workers. Now, I'm sort of saying interested in being a community tech worker because we did not identify the techie folks or the geeky folks, whatever. We sort of said, hey, come as you are. Well, we got some lessons behind that too. Okay, you need to say a few of those lessons. Well, come as you are meaning you may not know how to turn the computer on.

Yeah, that's real exactly it's part of our understanding is that hey do we want to have a a minimum skill level like hey you got at least know how to cut it on or we're still going to look at folks even if you don't know how to cut it on we still welcome you so we still have to figure that one out right but i think for me it was important that we didn't like say identify the geeky folks who already knew how to do it because, you know, sometimes just because they know how to do it, they may not know how to teach it. Folks who are learning how to use technology for the first time is more sympathetic and more patient and more understanding of others. Right. Yeah.

So basically, like I said, my thing is to make sure that we work with residents to develop those basic skills. And I love how Tawana talked about the project because she talked about this larger vision in terms of, you know, building those advanced skills. Right now, I'm just focusing on basic skills, you know. So it's nice to have her there sort of saying, hey, you know, they can do more, they can do more, they can do more. Yeah, I think we still need to work through this is do we want to call it community tech workers? Because, you know, for some tech might be exclusive, right? They might not identify with tech. And so, you know, there's a question of who do we miss, you know, in the beginning, who felt excluded just by the way we framed, you know, this opportunity. The team definitely talked about this. Do you need to come in with basic skill set? And just building on what Zachary said, you know, those who might not know how to turn on a computer, I mean, their strengths are the empathy, right? Because if you're a quote unquote geek, you might not be the best person to talk to people and patients. These are things that came out of our training. Right. We need to know how to work with or speak with, you know, other community members and understand and collaborations. I mean, also as researchers,

you know, when I think about collaborating with community partners, I think about sustainability, right? What happens if I'm no longer here? And even, you know, if the funding goes dry, what capacity did we build together? And how do we continue? You know, how do we continue on? So I'm thinking about how do we sustain a role in the community? You know, maybe we call it community tech workers, maybe we call them, you know, neighborhood intermediaries. I'm not sure what we call it, but how does that role sustain itself? And, you know, think about funding long-term, thinking about opportunities. We're collaborating with community health workers who, you know, need digital skills too. I mean, arguably we could, you know, maybe reach out to Ford Medical Center

because telehealth is big. Some people are not sure how to log into telehealth care appointments, or you may, maybe online grocery delivery services would say, you know, maybe there's a benefit if we had people who could support and others in ordering. If we had that, then maybe, you know, big business is always looking at revenue at the end of the day. So like, how does this factor into there? What does building community digital capacity mean in the long term? And how do we sustain these roles? I want to pick up that phrase you just put out there, community digital capacity. I actually want to really hold that up. I want to lift that up because community digital capacity, where I hear all of you talking about that means boosting, lifting communities to do the work

they're doing. Like I really hear that capacity building as this critical role that technologies could be playing that they haven't really played yet. Like we haven't really given technologies a chance to, at least from the builder side, to fully be focused on how do we build communities capacity. So I'm saying this because one of the goals of the Resolve research that I'm doing right now that resonates with what I hear you all saying is the goal is to think about how would you co-develop and support a coalition of community-based organizations, community healthcare workers, who have an idea of what their needs are, absolutely have an agenda, and they're rarely ever given the chance to set that agenda when it comes to what tools are built for them to do their work, and to own those tools, and to fully use the data they collect as power, and that they can share with their communities. So a big part of what we're working on is thinking about the role of participatory action research, you know, community-based participatory design, all of these phrases we have that we throw around. I want to talk about what that looks like because it's really hard when you're doing it right or trying to do it right.

So I would just love to hear you talk a bit about what does that mean to you? What does that look like? Let me start with Johanna. The project that Twana and I had did together really speaks to the way that I think about participatory research. First things first, I feel folks get wrong in spaces that I'm in, what campaign strategy and all this stuff is that people automatically want to go to like numbers and data driven stuff and but I just don't understand how a conversation doesn't

bring much more and I I respect data okay here's the thing I absolutely respect data I don't want to say that I don't but it's within the the lived experiences where the actual information is at. So when I think about participatory research and how that looks like in our work, it's absolutely by creating visioning spaces. Like that gives us so much data by like, what do people even care about? Like are we even kicking up a campaign that matters? But, you know, even outside of visioning, it's just simply asking like, you know, on this question of housing, like, does that actually feel like it would meet your needs? You know, what are your needs that the conversation that develops that, you know, creates that qualitative data, I think is like where the magic is at. And then take that to

figure out what the metrics can, you know, support that or show where the cracks are, you know, that paints this bigger picture when we go into advocacy mode. Participatory research really starts in the conversations and the meeting spaces and the lived experiences that people are sharing. Oh, oh, I love that. I love that in so many ways. Let me ask the same question to you. Let me start with Tawana. Especially knowing how computer science and engineering and particularly human-centered design, human-computer interaction strives to think about participation, participatory design as what we should aim for, what does it mean to you and how does it get rough when you're in the thick of it? Yeah. You know, in our field, when we talk about

participatory design, I think there's an inherent outcome or expectation that we're going to have a product or tangible output, like a user interface or some application. When I think about community based participatory research, which comes out of the public health field. We're thinking about the community. We're equitable partners in the research, and we're not really engaging unless there is a common goal, right? When I engage, you know, with communities, you know, interested in creating jobs, interested in employment, are there other organizations that are interested in, you know, new economies, new digital economies, or anyone else who cares about, you know, access to healthy food or transportation, and you're partnering because you have the same North Star, right? And in this partnership, you know, you figure out, okay,

here's the general direction. You might not have the exact, like, researchers come in with research questions, you know? Yes. Then you can say, well, yeah, if you in with research questions, you know. Yes. Then you can say, well, yeah, if you address this research question, that'll definitely be beneficial. It'll help us, you know, understand these other things that we're trying to get to. But that's not necessarily our core. We like it, but it might not be our core. And then when you're engaging in community-based participatory research, it is a long-term process, right? You're planning ahead. As a researcher, you have to address the research questions. We need to think about how we can leverage these insights, maybe to inform technology, but it's not necessarily the outcome. Maybe we're exploring

existing technologies and exploring in the context of a time bank. What changes need to be made to a time bank in order to address transportation needs of transportation insecure communities, rural communities, that kind of thing. And so that's what, you know, community-based participatory research means to me, which is a little bit different from user-centered design and participatory design because you're really going in with the technology first approach. Yeah. And I feel like we've been discovering in our work, really the first grant is about building trust because there's no reason anybody should trust anybody from coming outside of their communities, especially if they're at all at the margins. how can I help you first? It understandably can create even more barriers. So yeah, I don't think we give ourselves enough room to say the first stretch of time is let's get to know each other and give you a reason to participate in anything I'm bringing. So I want to ask Zachary, could you

just tell us about the Detroit Urban Research Center and your definition of community-based participatory action research? Yeah. So the Detroit URC, well, if you call it Detroit URC for short. So basically the Detroit URC started back in 1995. And in a nutshell, the URC focused on fostering health equity through community-based participatory research. Years ago, I didn't really see the point of research or data, really. And it's not that it wasn't important. It was just how it was introduced to the community. And so we were introduced to research by sort of the traditional research approach where you had researchers coming to the community, pretty much have their way or do whatever they wanted and leave, right? They rarely shared the data. They rarely, you know, asked us any questions.

They rarely involved the community. So basically they would come in with their survey, with their questions, get the answers and leave. We won't hear from them again until the next project. Right. And so to be honest, we were pretty much soured on the whole idea of research for years until, you know, folks from the University of Michigan School of Public Health, you know, came to Detroit, talking to community groups about this thing called CBPR. is that the community partners are equal partner in the research from developing the initial research question to disseminating the results and everything in between. And so this was a different way of doing research that really appealed to community partners, you know, definitely appealed to us because we were at the table sometimes agreeing and sometimes disagreeing with some of the research stuff. But that was okay though, because we were at the table, sometimes agreeing and sometimes disagreeing with some of the research stuff. But that was OK, though, because we were all equal partners.

You know, I value research now, but I value CBPR research more than others, though, just because we're at the table. Twana, did you want to jump in? No, I totally agree. I remember sharing with my class last year, Zachary's video on community-based participatory research where he, I think we're at a potluck together and, you know, you bring your own dish and everybody else brings their dishes and we can enjoy a meal together. If you don't like the greens, you know, you could stay away from the greens, you know, but we're all eating here. Like I thought Zachary is going to go there. I love that analogy. Thank you.

We'll just have to make sure that link's available. I think that'd be a great thing to put on the podcast. And I want to bring up what I feel like we have to talk about. And I was going to ask Joanna if you'd maybe lead us off and think about how power differentials factor into this work. For example, I'm a white woman working with a group of predominantly black and brown community members, many people undocumented, all of them doing community health. My biggest connection is my mom was a nurse, so I understand some of that world. But I would love to talk about how we strive for that sense of equality. We're also navigating power differentials that come from our institutions. So maybe if you want to speak to that.

One of the values that we hold that I've been trained on is just like the people closest to the issue know their solution. The people furthest from it, you know, can theorize and get all philosophical, but it's not coming from a lived experience. So that shows up a lot in conversations where, you know, we're trying to all get alignment, build coalition, build power, and like people operate differently and people haven't done the same type of, you know, conscious thinking or unpacking of their own internalized white supremacy or capitalism or patriarchy. Detroit Action is an anti-capitalist organization.

And so that comes up a lot in our work and our strategy and the way that we're building with folks because we're all at different levels from our own perspectives. But it's really important to hold on to the value, right, of like those closest to the issue know the solution. Because if we stay there, then it makes ego getting checked at the door just a little bit easier because we're grounded on that same value. And so I will say like this comes up a lot in so many different ways. But for me, as I do my work, like I said, it has to go back to that one-on-one for me because my members are working class. My members don't have the technological access to these meetings. They can't always tap in really quick. best agreement really on like how to move this work forward and it's where their stories can guide the work and that's where I can build trust with them because I work in the largest black city of America like I'm not a black person I cannot speak for the black community but what I can do

is utilize my time to talk with all my members to know that their stories are guiding this work and so that's what I do and that's what I have to do and create the meeting spaces where they can continue to guide the work, whether it's visioning, whether it's the committee space to make the decision, whether it's the one-on-one, because we just need to talk. And I need to get your input

on how this is supposed to go. And it comes down to that. For me, it comes down to that. That's how we address this power stuff, but it comes up in so many different ways. The amount of racial scapegoating that we have to experience as a black and brown city from our elected officials or the media for painting narratives that it's on us to turn out for the results of some type of election, X, Y, Z, it comes up in so many different ways. We're constantly battling it, but I think it's our values that keep us at least principled in our struggle because we are going to struggle. We are going to mess up. We do need the feedback. We do need to be able to manage up horizontally, whatever the case is. A membership is included in that. Like it's not just staff. So, you know, being able to at least create the safe spaces to be uncomfortable is the thing in which we are able to like address

power dynamics and in these relationships and systems. Okay, just a quick follow up. And I'll direct it to Tawana and Zachary, just to be able to build on what Joanna is saying here. Where have you seen in your work, this effort of putting folks closest to the problem who have their solutions in the driver's seat for taking on the technology piece of that, for being able to build something that supports the solutions they already have. Yeah, I mean, I think it goes back to co-designing, you know, and this is kind of like once you figure out what the technology is, you've come up with this quote unquote solution together,

then I think that's when the developer can step in. And it's a matter of co-designing. It's that agile approach where it's okay, here's how I understand it. Let me create this or let me conceptualize it in a prototype way. And this back and forth communication is this, what we're seeing. This is, you know, some examples of my past work when creating dream gigs with job seekers and having the job seekers see, oh yeah, this is exactly what I need. And oh, by the way, if there's a way to connect this, can you tell us how we can access, you know, volunteer work so that we can build our skills? That would be amazing, right?

And so we're building it together, you know, the co-designing and then co-development and they might not be programming, but they're looking at the output and talking to the developer or at least seeing the output, the outcome of the developer say, yes, this is what I was asking for. Or no, no, no, no, this is not what I was asking for. But it takes a lot of work up front to get to that point, I think. So how should researchers compensate, like really recognize the value that community members are putting in? Like what is a way to really genuinely honor and compensate the contributions community members are making to development? Let me ask that of you, Zachary. Like what's the best way to show up?

Well, for me, I would say the best way is to ask. You know, I mean, for some, it may just be monetary. They may just want cash or they just may want credit. I would just ask the community how you want your contribution to be recognized and be willing to do it. I just want to go back to a question you asked earlier, power. And one of the things that I've learned over time is to understand the power you do have and use it. One thing that all research projects have in mind is the need for data. And if they're collecting the data from the community, then that's your power. Because community folks can say, no, we don't want to participate. Right. So, you know, I know it sounds kind of simplistic, but it works.

And so once you understand where your power is and you use it, then it begins to have an impact. Then also one of the other things I realized, our resources that we work with are wonderful. Tawana is wonderful. Right. But it's not Tawana that's the problem. Sometimes it's the university infrastructure, right? It's the accounting department. Maybe it's, you know, maybe it's the IRB. I mean, there are other issues that really don't get and don't understand why community partners are a part of the research team or why they're on the project. So I want to ask you, what are some future projects you're most excited about heading into 2022? What is keeping you excited about pushing forward? Let me start with Tawana. working on understanding residents' perceptions of safety alongside Project Greenlight in Detroit. And so he's going to take a photo voice approach as a way to capture community narratives of safety

and kind of exhibit these photos once we're there. He's also extending this to video voice, which might be a little bit more complex, but there's a methodological understanding of how video voice might work in the community context, given that we can take videos over our phone. Wow. How about you, Zachary? What are you excited about for 2022? Definitely more excited about making sure that residents of Parkside develop those basic skills to be able to navigate the online world, right? Also, I'm excited about another project I'm working on called Deciders, whereby we're developing an online tool that allows communities to set their own priorities.

Joanna, what's coming up in 2022? 2022 is a big year. It's a big, big year. It's a midterm year, midterm election. So maybe not necessarily excited about election season, but I'm excited to see how our members tap in and weigh in. And like Zachary said, power is simply just acting. And so how are we going to use this moment to seize our power? What are the actions we're going to take to drive our agenda for a new economy forward, but also to defend Black voters? We're part of a coalition to defend the Black vote in Michigan. It is definitely under attack. And it's unfortunate, but corporate actors are involved.

And so we're asking them to no longer fund these folks that are putting these 39 voter suppression bills forward in the state of Michigan, which is so unfortunate. And now trying to sidestep the governor with the voter suppression ballot initiative called Secure My Vote. Suppress My Vote is what we rename it. But yeah, there's a lot of things that were tapped into this year, but definitely excited for how our members show up in this election season. Show up and show out, right?

Show up and show out. You got it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I'm going to just take a second to thank the three of you for joining me today. And I want more. I hope we get to have another conversation, but thanks for sharing your work with us. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you. And thanks to our listeners for tuning in.

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