We found the Anti-DOGE in Chicago

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.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
A hey, hey August Nope.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
April April eighteenth, twenty twenty five, Baryton Day here with
another dispatch from the world of how to citizen and
a new story.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Couple of orientation things. UH.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
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.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
A part of or know of. We are doing this
week long.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
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.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
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.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
And that's just not the way. That is just not
the way.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
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.

(01:30):
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

(01:53):
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

(02:17):
the lives of Chicagoan's better and using technology in the process.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
So that story's coming up.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
I also want to plug one more thing from a
parallel universe that I'm operating in right now.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
I'm doing a new.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
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.

(02:53):
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.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Better together to solve our own problems.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
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.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
About Democracy Next.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
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.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
So that's the point.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
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?

Speaker 1 (04:14):
The answer is yes. The question is will we do it?

Speaker 2 (04:17):
All?

Speaker 1 (04:18):
Right? See you next time.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
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,

(04:42):
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.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
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

(05:17):
shy Hack Knight and had this idea about trying to
make food stamps more accessible to people in Chicago and
potentially around the country.

Speaker 4 (05:25):
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

(05:47):
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.

Speaker 5 (05:56):
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.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
Shai Haak Knight has a unique vibe where it's joyous, it's.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
Optimistic, and it's warm and is welcoming.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
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