Good morning. Thank you so much for having me. It’s a privilege to be here, and I’m looking forward to learning from all of you over the course of the day. 

These gatherings are particularly important right now—those of us focused on digital equity have had some serious reversals these past few months, and being in community can be a balm and a boost. 

I am Revati Prasad—I lead the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. I want to believe we are a household name, but just in case, I'd like to provide you with a little background about the organization. We are a 44-year-old non-profit—and although the last ten years our focus has been on broadband, our DNA  is media and telecommunications policy in the public interest. Ensuring people (all people) have access to the means of communication in ways that advance their lives. 

You probably know Benton for our newsletters and our own reporting on what is happening in the broadband and tech policy world. We also do research—reports and webinars to serve as an information resource. What is less visible from outside is our federal policy work—we intervene in litigation (like the recent Universal Service Fund case), file comments with federal agencies, and the like.  And in the last few years, we have been working at the state and community level—with advocates, policymakers, and just passionate folks who want better broadband for crying out loud.

It is our state and community work—broadband committees and digital equity coalitions—that really informs what I want to talk about today. I want to share what we’ve learned doing this work, as well as why we believe that funders and policymakers need to stop seeing coalitions as auxiliary and start seeing them as essential infrastructure, the stuff in the background that is easy to take for granted but that makes other things possible.

There’s a phrase I’ve come back to often as I reflect on our work. It’s the title of a book by sociologist Francesca Polletta: Freedom Is an Endless Meeting.

It is a little bit of a joke, a little tongue-in-cheek. It makes me think about the Zoom calls stacked in our calendars. It’s also a profound truth about what real democracy requires.

Polletta studied how social movements organized—not just what they demanded, but how they deliberated. She was looking at the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the women’s movement of the 1960s—powerful movements that left lasting marks. 

And what she finds is that democracy, a realized democracy, takes diligence. You need vision, absolutely, but making that vision real requires the often slow, often painstaking work of bringing people together, really listening, exchanging views, challenging assumptions, and seeking common purpose. All that is essential to build a foundation for durable action.

What I want to explore today is how this practice—the hard, deliberate, democratic work of coalition-building—has become the backbone of digital equity advocacy and practice. Because freedom isn’t a destination. It’s a practice. And like all serious practices, it takes discipline, humility, and time. 

Let’s talk about what that looks like in the digital equity movement.

Getting everyone connected isn’t just about deploying physical infrastructure. Digital equity is not just a technological challenge—it’s a political one. The communities most affected by the digital divide—Black, Brown, Indigenous, rural, low-income, people with disabilities—are the same communities that have long been underrepresented in decision-making spaces. It’s not just that broadband hasn’t been built in these communities. It’s that the people who live there haven’t had a voice in how broadband policy is made, or in how resources are allocated, or in what “success” looks like.

That’s why coalitions matter. Coalitions bring people together across sectors and geographies to advocate for shared goals. A good coalition connects nonprofits, libraries, small ISPs, housing organizations, health clinics, anchor institutions, and—most importantly—residents.

Coalitions are not easy. Bringing community groups together, coordinating or collaborating with ISPs or state governments. Navigating conflicting needs. Building trust between unlikely partners. —  They require compromise. They require trust. They require process. They require meetings—many of them. Some productive. Some meandering. All necessary.  But coalitions are the only durable way to ensure that policy is grounded in community needs.

Let me give you a quick example. In Missouri, our Show Me Broadband coalition was instrumental in uncovering problems with the state’s broadband coverage maps. Small ISPs and rural community groups had long been saying the maps were wrong—but it wasn’t until they spoke together, with a shared analysis and a coordinated message, that policymakers listened.

Coalitions help communities tell their stories more clearly—and more loudly.

They also help create institutional memory. Too often, digital inclusion efforts rise and fall with the enthusiasm of a single champion. When that person leaves, the work stalls. But a coalition—if it’s structured well—can survive turnover. It can develop new leaders. It can evolve.

And coalitions are a safeguard against technocratic policymaking. They remind funders and officials that equity isn’t just a box to check. It’s a commitment to engaging the people most affected, even—and especially—when it’s inconvenient.

This brings us back to Polletta and Freedom Is an Endless Meeting. Because what she shows is that inclusive democracy will always feel inefficient to those used to making decisions and acting unilaterally. But deliberation is the cornerstone of democracy.

We’ve tried to embody that ethos through our state coalition work. Here’s what we’ve learned along the way. 

In 2023, we launched the Broadband State Education Project in Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Arizona, and later expanded into Western North Carolina. Our goal is to seed and support public interest broadband and digital equity coalitions in each state—coalitions that can bring together advocates, local leaders, community organizations, small internet providers, and public institutions to shape policy from the ground up.

Each coalition is led by a part-time coordinator. That detail is important. We didn’t install top-down leadership. We hired people from within the states—people who were already trusted, already informed, and already networked. We don’t presume to know the people, the needs, the specific context of Missouri (I’ll be going for the first time next month!)  The goal was not to create something entirely new, but to grow something that already existed. 

The Missouri coalition, Show Me Broadband, quickly became a critical voice in the state’s broadband landscape. When state grant programs relied on flawed maps that failed to capture the true extent of rural unserved areas, Show Me Broadband mobilized technical experts and community members to challenge the data. 

Benton and Show Me folks also pushed the Federal Communications Commission to release data on providers who are defaulting on their Rural Digital Opportunity Fund awards. That analysis made its way into federal proceedings and helped shift national narratives about map accuracy and funding fairness. Show Me Broadband worked with the Missouri Attorney General and U.S. Senator Josh Hawley to call for reallocation of that money. .

In Pennsylvania, the Keystone Internet Coalition—or KIC—emerged as a unifying force among dozens of digital inclusion groups, advocacy nonprofits, and educational institutions. KIC not only developed comment letters and policy recommendations, but has also tried to exercise real influence with the state government. The coalition developed a minimum standard for digital navigation, so when the state funds that work, there is a bar it will have to meet. 

In Arizona, Arizona Broadband for All focused its energy on lifting up tribal and rural voices. The coordinator organized community events, brokered relationships between local groups and the state broadband office, and hosted roundtables that provided stakeholders direct access to state and federal program staff. This kind of convening work isn’t always headline-grabbing, but it’s how trust is built and doors are opened.

Then there’s Western North Carolina, where we recently helped form the Blue Ridge Broadband Alliance. This coalition works in a region with significant digital challenges—both mountainous terrain and persistent poverty. But the region also has strong local leaders. The Blue Ridge Broadband Alliance is mobilizing people and working with the state to highlight the impact of the Trump administration's cancellation of Digital Equity Act grants to the region and encourage legal action, plan the recovery after Helene, and align efforts across counties. 

Each of these coalitions is different. But they all share a few things in common. They are:

• Led locally by people with existing credibility;
• Supported structurally by Benton, which provides technical assistance, research, and administrative help; and 
• Focused not just on information-sharing—but on advocacy, coordination, and accountability.

And here’s something else they share: they’re all stretched thin.

While each coordinator is funded for part-time work (what a luxury!), nearly every one of them puts in significantly more time. These coordinators organize meetings, manage email lists, maintain websites, prep for public comments, coach members, and, sometimes, mediate between stakeholders with competing priorities. It’s a massive lift. Some days you’re a policy analyst, some days an event planner, and some days (many days) a therapist. 

That kind of emotional and logistical labor is rarely visible—but it’s central to coalition sustainability. 

Just as Polletta describes in her book, the invisible work of making democracy function—scheduling, note-taking, following up, checking in—is often undervalued. But it’s where trust gets built. It’s where community voice becomes community power.

Her work on the civil rights struggle and women’s liberation movement is focused on the how: how these movements attempted to live out democratic ideals not just in theory, but in how they structure meetings, make decisions, and build coalitions. And she is very clear-eyed about both the potential and the pitfalls of this work.

She writes about the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In the early 1960s, SNCC pioneered what it called “participatory democracy.” This wasn’t just about inclusion; it was about radical decentralization. SNCC field staff worked in rural Black communities across the South, not to tell people what to do, but to help them build their own leadership, their own voter registration drives, their own agendas.

But that kind of work takes time. SNCC organizers would spend days—sometimes weeks—in meetings, building trust with community members, developing consensus, and finding common ground. They resisted top-down directives, choosing instead to make decisions through collective deliberation.

This created extraordinary outcomes: empowered local leaders, effective campaigns, and a deeply democratic ethos. 

But it also led to challenges. As SNCC grew, it became increasingly difficult to coordinate strategy across regions. The absence of clear hierarchies sometimes meant that decisions were delayed or overridden by informal power dynamics. 

Polletta also looks at the informal power dynamics in the Women’s movement. Many consciousness-raising groups and feminist collectives rejected formal leadership in favor of an egalitarian process. These groups emphasized personal storytelling, shared decision-making, and rotating facilitation. For many participants, these spaces were transformative. They offered a sense of inclusion and agency rarely found in other parts of their lives.

But over time, these groups also encountered limits. Meetings stretched for hours. Decisions were hard to make. People with more social capital—more education, more verbal fluency, more confidence—often ended up setting the agenda anyway. The structurelessness that was intended to promote equality sometimes led to new hierarchies.

Polletta’s point isn’t that democratic process doesn’t work. Her point is that it’s hard—and that we must support it with intention. Democracy requires structure, clarity, and resources. Otherwise, the very processes meant to empower can end up exhausting or excluding.

In our state coalition work, we’ve seen the same dynamics. Our coordinators are deeply committed to inclusive processes. They work to make space for every voice. They follow up with stakeholders who are unable to attend the meeting.  Digital equity coalitions will include members with varying levels of knowledge about broadband and digital equity. It's not about telling them what to think when it comes to pole attachments or coops or municipal broadband or skills frameworks or learn-to-earn programs, but providing them with information so they can make decisions. Coordinators simplify complex policy issues so that all members can engage meaningfully..

But coordinators also face trade-offs. When a meeting runs long or when consensus proves elusive, they must decide whether to push forward or pause. When a coalition includes both digital inclusion advocates and infrastructure providers, or both urban and rural stakeholders, coordinators must find common ground without diluting the mission. Coalition members don't all have the same stake in digital equity, nor do they have the same values. Good coalitions and coordinators surface disagreement when it matters rather than letting the loudest or best-resourced members dominate.

And like the groups Polletta studied, our state coalitions rely on leaders who are willing to carry a heavy emotional and logistical load—without always having the formal authority or the material support that such responsibility requires. 

What Polletta teaches us is that this isn’t a failure. It’s a feature of the kind of organizing we’re doing. And it underscores why funders and institutional partners must recognize that process is not peripheral to policy—process is central to progress.

If we want coalitions that last—coalitions that can hold elected officials and government bureaucracies accountable, that can inform policy design, that can surface community knowledge—we need to invest not just in outcomes, but in the people and structures that make participatory democracy possible. Coalition success doesn’t just depend on having a strong leader. It depends on giving that leader the time, resources, and support to lead sustainably.

In response to these lessons—both from the social movements of the past and the realities of today’s digital equity organizing—Benton has developed a tiered support model for coalitions. This model acknowledges that while coalitions may look different across states, they all need basic infrastructure, technical assistance, and strategic reinforcement to thrive.

We designed the model with modularity in mind. Some coalitions are mature and only need targeted supports. Others are just getting started and need more hands-on guidance. In either case, the approach is about building capacity, not dependency.

Here are the core components:

1. Expertise. Coalitions require accurate and timely policy information. Broadband funding rules, federal guidance, state grant programs, public comment windows—these change constantly. Benton provides analysis, plain-language breakdowns, and alerts that keep coalition leaders informed without overwhelming them.
2. Networks. We support coalitions by helping them connect with one another. While each state navigates its own unique political and policy context, there is strong value in comparing notes across states, especially when responding to federal actions. Coalitions benefit from sharing policy developments and, when appropriate, collaborating on federal comments. We also help connect coalitions with policymakers and state officials. These relationships matter: it’s one thing to run a coalition focused solely on practice, and another to build one capable of influencing the policy structures that shape that practice.
3. Identity. Are you even a real entity if you don’t have a proper website? Benton supports each coalition in creating a professional identity—logos, websites, letterhead, slide templates, and consistent messaging. This helps coalitions present themselves as serious policy actors, not just informal working groups.
4. Recruitment. We help coordinators strategize around coalition membership - sharing examples from other states and helping people think through the dynamics. Who should be invited? Should our coalition include internet service providers? How do you balance breadth with focus? At some point, more stops being merrier and gets too diffuse to have specific goals. It's a crucial distinction between coalitions that are focused on practice - we did this, others might want to know about it VS. advocacy. Who you need at the table will also evolve in response to what’s happening on the ground and in the legislature. 
5. Leadership. Running a coalition is a full-time job, even if it’s only funded part-time. Planning the agenda is the much more important and energy-consuming challenge. Defining problems, identifying solutions, determining specific to-dos, coordinating execution, navigating politics and govt procedure, keeping members motivated - it requires strong leadership. We provide coaching, help with agenda planning, and check in with coordinators to troubleshoot challenges before they escalate. We also help plan for leadership transitions, to ensure continuity. 
6. Logistics. Behind every successful meeting is a long email thread. We assist with member tracking, Zoom setup, listserv management, newsletter platforms, and calendaring. It’s the work that no one sees—but it’s what keeps a coalition coherent.

These supports may sound simple. But for a part-time coordinator with limited administrative help, they are the difference between burnout and momentum.

This model is not static. We revise it constantly based on coordinator feedback and what we learn from the field. But the core idea remains: If we want coalition work to be inclusive and effective, we have to treat coordination as real labor that deserves real infrastructure.

That’s the promise of the tiered model. And it’s one we hope others will adopt and build on.

So what does all of this mean for funders, government officials, and institutional partners?

It means we need to shift how we think about impact. We’re used to measuring success in outcomes: policies passed, funds distributed, maps corrected, households connected. Those things matter—a lot. But behind every policy win is a set of invisible inputs: coalition calls, strategy sessions, draft letters, tense conversations, consensus-building, and follow-up emails.  If we want long-term change, we must invest in the process that gets us there. At the same time, measuring those activities—how many meetings did you hold, how many calls did you make, how many organizations did you invite may or may not tell us anything meaningful. 

Our focus should be to build durable capacity—our approach to this challenge of measuring coalition work is some research we are doing in Western North Carolina. From the get-go, we have embedded ethnographic researchers into a region-wide effort to build digital equity (they call it opportunity in those parts). They’re participant observers focused on examining whether the coalition is reflecting community needs and is effective in advocating for them. (Happy to talk about the how if anyone wants to nerd out.) 

To funders: coalitions are not incidental. They are essential civic infrastructure. They make the policymaking process accessible to people who are distant from those who have decision-making authority. They make accountability possible. Coalitions help ensure that the benefits of public investment reach the people who need them most. But coalitions cannot run on goodwill alone. They need core operating support. They need staff time. They need communications capacity. And they need it for more than a single grant cycle. Be flexible. Allow for adaptation. Understand that coalition-building often means navigating disagreements, absorbing delays, and taking time to build trust. That’s not drift—it’s democracy.

To policymakers: coalitions are your most valuable partners. They can surface blind spots in policy design, share stories that bring data to life, and help explain complex programs to the public. But only if you engage with them early and often.

Include coalitions in your advisory bodies. Invite them to listening sessions. Give them a heads-up when new guidance is coming. Respect the fact that coalition leaders may not always speak with one voice—but that doesn’t mean they’re disorganized. It means they’re deliberating.

As Polletta’s work reminds us, the legitimacy of democratic movements doesn’t come from unanimity—it comes from meaningful participation.

I’ll close by returning to that line: Freedom is an endless meeting.

It’s a little funny, a little exhausting—and completely true.

At the heart of every major movement for justice has been a meeting. Often many of them. Some in church basements. Some on folding chairs in union halls. Some now on Zoom, after work, with kids in the background and dinner half-cooked. These meetings are where people share stories, test ideas, build trust, and discover that they’re not alone.

They are slow. They are messy. But they are where power is built—and where freedom is exercised.

The work of digital equity isn’t just about laying fiber or distributing laptops. It’s about ensuring that policies, programs, and priorities reflect the needs and aspirations of the people most affected by digital exclusion. And that only happens through sustained, supported, and strategic coalition-building.

We don’t need perfect coalitions. We need persistent ones. 

We need coalitions that can weather leadership changes, policy shifts, and funding gaps. We need coalitions that grow stronger with time because their foundations are solid.

So let’s honor the work of coordination. Let’s invest in the process. Let’s keep the meeting going. Because in the end, the meeting isn’t just where we talk about freedom—it’s where we practice it. 

Thank you.

Dr. Revati Prasad is the Executive Director of the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.

The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring that all people in the U.S. have access to competitive, High-Performance Broadband regardless of where they live or who they are. We believe communication policy - rooted in the values of access, equity, and diversity - has the power to deliver new opportunities and strengthen communities.

© Benton Institute for Broadband & Society 2025. Redistribution of this email publication - both internally and externally - is encouraged if it includes this copyright statement.

For subscribe/unsubscribe info, please email headlinesATbentonDOTorg

Kevin Taglang
Executive Editor, Communications-related Headlines
Benton Institute
for Broadband & Society
1041 Ridge Rd, Unit 214
Wilmette, IL 60091
847-220-4531
headlines AT benton DOT org

Share this edition:

Broadband Delivers Opportunities and Strengthens Communities