We found the Anti-DOGE in Chicago

Published Apr 18, 2025, 3:45 PM

Today, we head to Chicago, where a civic gathering called Chi Hack Night is bringing technologists, designers, policy nerds, and everyday residents together to build a better city.

Access to visuals for this story are here:

https://newsletter.baratunde.com/p/we-found-the-anti-doge-in-chicago 

and that conversation on Life With Machines with Deb Roy is here

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/life-with-machines/id1766829040?i=1000703577941 

mRelief, a woman-led initiative that’s made it easier for people to access food benefits. Since 2018, it’s helped unlock $2 BILLION (yes, with a B) in SNAP support for people across the country.

In a time of DOGE and digital distrust, it’s tempting to think all tech can do is tear things down. But this is what happens when we invite everyone—not just the billionaires—into the process of shaping solutions.

This is what citizening looks like:

  • 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 People-powered innovation

  • 🏙️ Tech rooted in place

  • 💡 Making tools with communities, not just for them

     

💬 Seen something like this in your community, an org that asks first?

Visit https://stories.howtocitizen.com, join our list, and let us know you have a story to share. These stories are everywhere — and we need them more than ever.

A hey, hey August Nope.

April April eighteenth, twenty twenty five, Baryton Day here with another dispatch from the world of how to citizen and a new story.

Couple of orientation things. UH.

Find us at stories dot howdocitizen dot com. Please sign up for the email let us know what you think about these share if you have a story uh that you are.

A part of or know of. We are doing this week long.

Push to see, uh, how much more supply and how much more demand there are? And the response has been real good, and I just wanna make sure you know that we're looking for a response. So stories dot howdocitizen dot com.

Put your name on that. Let's check that box if you have something to add to the mix. Now, today's story uh a.

Lot about technology, a lot about technology and government, and of course the headline of government in tech is doge the Department of Government made up stuff.

And that's just not the way. That is just not the way.

That's personal for me. My mom was a programmer for the federal government. I have friends who worked at the US Digital Service, which the Obama administration spun up, but which the first Trump administration maintained and the point was to improve government services, was to improve the lives of the people and bring technology to bear on solving that. And what we have going on now is really just a slash and burn. It's very non transparent, it is not even efficient. The savings they say they've found are mostly fraudulent and not true, and the cost of their savings is probably higher than the money that they're no longer spending. So that's not the point, you know how the citizen, we'd like to tell the positive story. And the positive story is happening in Chicago. And this is a group called Shy Hack Night, which been running for years, and they tap into the commitment and the capabilities of the people of Chicago, regular citizens, data people, design people, software engineering people, government people all coming together to make the lives of Chicagoan's better and using technology in the process.

So that story's coming up.

I also want to plug one more thing from a parallel universe that I'm operating in right now.

I'm doing a new.

Podcast if you want, like the latest what's going on a very tunday in the podcast world. It is Life with Machines. It's an exploration of tech, but it's about the humans and it's exploring this AI super high tech future and what it means for us and what we want to get out of it. And this week we have done a conversation with a man named deb Roy. He's at the MIT Media Lab and co founded this company called Cortico, and they're using AI to help us see each other to help people make collective decisions better. This isn't about replacing us, it's about allowing us to work.

Better together to solve our own problems.

And so it's pairing, an idea that we've talked about in the full version of this podcast before the Citizen Assembly, and we talked about it with Astra Taylor in that episode. We also talked about it with Claudia Folets in the episode.

About Democracy Next.

So citizen assemblies random people selected to serve in government, to advise the government, not based on raising their hands like jewelry duty. For total government service, you get paid, it's facilitated, and with Cordico, you have the assistance of technology to help with language barriers, to help do to help make sense of all the contributions of the people.

So that's the point.

All the people have something to contribute and the role of technology can and should be to facilitate that to help us be great. So please enjoy the short story that we have embedded in this audio and then check out the show notes for a link to that episode of Life with Machines on can AI help us save democracy?

The answer is yes. The question is will we do it?

All?

Right? See you next time.

We don't need a billionaire and his technology to come save us from government, but there is a role for technology with the people to make government work better for the people. Instead of relying on a secret group of technologists, you invite all the people, including those closest to the problem, to be part of the solution, working with those in government and beyond with the technologists. It's happening in Chicago. Check out this amazing story of Shi Hacknight.

Chai Haknite has become this place for folks from government, from the tech sector, private sector, nonprofit sector to get together and share some of their experiences and actually work together on different projects. One of the projects that really sticks out in my mind that sort of emerged from shy hack Knight is a nonprofit called m Relief Coding boot Camp graduates Rosa Freer and Genevieve Nielsen came to shy Hack Knight and had this idea about trying to make food stamps more accessible to people in Chicago and potentially around the country.

M Relief is a woman led team of technologists united by the belief that food is a human right. People can actually submit documents through their phone through SMS messaging. They can also find out if they qualify for SNAP in ninety seconds or less by utilizing their phone on SMS messaging, so they can send a text and we will send them one question at a time. Since twenty eighteen, we've unlocked more than two billion dollars in SNAP benefits for people across the country. I think the interesting thing about shi Hak Knight is that it's like everyday regular people and people who didn't have programming backgrounds, including our co founders.

If you can help build something around disseminating government information, are enhancing transparency and accessibility, providing a voice and policy participation in the process, when you can see the results of that, that's really impactful, and that's what we've evolved into.

Shai Haak Knight has a unique vibe where it's joyous, it's.

Optimistic, and it's warm and is welcoming.

It has a lot of different people with different skill sets and kind of united by a common interest of being community minded, caring about Chicago, and being interested in learning more

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