San Francisco (AFP)
A photo of two young girls using the Wi-Fi of a fast food chain to "go to school" online has become a symbol of America's digital divide.
The image shows the two girls hunched over small laptops, sitting cross-legged on the concrete floor at the edge of a Mexican Taco Bell restaurant in Salinas, Calif., A stone's throw from Silicon Valley.
Their faces are masked by emoticons to protect their identities and two restaurant employees address them.
The photo went viral after being shared by local elected official Kevin de Leon.
“Two schoolgirls sitting in front of a Taco Bell to use wifi and + go to school + online,” the politician tweeted last week.
"This is California, the region of Silicon Valley ... But the digital divide is as deep here as ever"
Salinas sits in the middle of an agricultural region, the one that inspired John Steinbeck for his novel "The Grapes of Wrath," about expropriated farmers starving to death in California in the 1930s.
Today the city is home to many immigrant workers.
The elected official specified that 40% of Latinos do not have access to the internet in California.
After seeing the tweet, school officials in Salinas provided a Wi-Fi hotspot to the family of the two girls, according to a spokesperson contacted by AFP.
The district is awaiting the delivery of 2,500 additional terminals for distribution to families, "in order to create bridges to break digital isolation in the school community."
© 2020 AFP