Often when left-wing people talk about the Internet, the subject of a “digital divide” comes up. According to the common wisdom, the Internet is all well and good when we’re talking about well-paid, educated people living in rich countries, but it’s useless as a way of communicating with the poor – and not only overseas. Even in places like Britain, it remains true that the more money you have, the more likely you are to be online.

And yet there are increasingly examples of audacious attempts to break through the digital divide and one of the most extraordinary is a project in Canada called “Homeless Nation”. The website – at http://www.homelessnation.org – is a place where currently homeless people, as well as those who were recently homeless, can use the net to communicate with one another and the world.
The founders of the site say “The Homeless Nation website has been created to reverse stereotyping, to empower the street community to undertake their own representation, and to foster a national dialogue around the most serious social problem facing us today: homelessness.”
At the present time, the site has over 1,500 registered users. Hundreds of homeless people use it to collect their email, to post photographs and videos, and even to maintain their own blogs (including videoblogs). There is a French version in addition to the English one.
The site’s users share experiences and knowledge, discussing things like how to cash a cheque when you don’t have identification or a fixed address. They invite each other to attend rallies, to get involved in fighting for their rights.
Even before the Homeless Nation website existed, many homeless people were using the Internet – often through public libraries.
Homeless Nation is an extraordinary project, and one should keep it in mind the next time someone denies that the Internet is a useful tool for reaching out to working class or poor people. If hundreds of homeless people are making video broadcasts and blogging online, trade unions should also be maximizing their use of the new technology – and involving their members.