For many community organizations that work on social justice issues, just keeping the office computers running can be a challenge.

Diana Nucera, Director of the Detroit Community Technology Project, has traveled as far as Brazil and stayed as close as a mile to her home, teaching people how to build low-cost, small-scale, high-speed wireless Internet networks. An autodidact who DJs under the moniker, “Mother Cyborg,” Nucera sometimes incorporates a disco soundtrack into her popular education curriculum.

In July, police shot and killed Alton Sterling and Philando Castile — two unarmed Black men — in a 48-hour period. Videos of their deaths, filmed on cellphones by witnesses, went public almost immediately. Protests erupted across the US, and “Black Lives Matter” again became a rallying cry as thousands of people blocked highways, occupied government buildings and demonstrated in city streets. Within hours, a right-wing backlash swept across the nation, fueled by the actions of an unaffiliated US military veteran who shot five police officers at a march in Dallas. Not long afterward, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) national website mysteriously went down.