Thought Portal

A federal appeals court affirmed that the Federal Communications Commission's murder of the internet was lawful.1

This is undoubtedly a setback in winning back net neutrality. But civil rights defenders just like you have never backed down from a fight for justice. This time is no different.

Now more than ever, we must make sure that Democratic 2020 candidates support a free and open internet and publicly commit to restoring net neutrality in their first 100 days.

Tell 2020 Democratic candidates: Restore net neutrality.

Losing the open internet has been particularly harmful for communities of color, who rely on it to organize, create economic opportunity and fight back against oppression. Our fight for every progressive issue depends on the open internet. If companies like Comcast and AT&T get to decide who can communicate, we all lose.

Our activism has already pushed Democrats in the House of Representatives to pass the Save the Internet Act.1 But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refuses to bring the legislation up for a vote.2 We need to keep the pressure on him, but we also have to go around him. If the next president appoints FCC commissioners who will give us back the free and open Internet, Mitch McConnell and his Republican lackies in Congress won't be able to stop them.

With the telecom industry throwing millions of dollars at presidential candidates, there's no telling which ones will make the right decision on their own.3 That's why we're joining with Fight for the Future, Demand Progress and other progressive partners to force all Democratic 2020 hopefuls go on record now.

Tell 2020 Democrats: Appoint FCC commissioners who will restore the free and open internet.

Thanks for fighting back.

References:

“ As someone who has written or co-written a stack of books about media and democracy issues, and who has engaged with these issues for a very long time, I can name only a handful of politicians who understand what is at stake in today’s technology debates. And I have never encountered a first-time candidate who has a better sense of how to address them than El-Sayed. His “MI-Fi” plan to develop “Internet for All” in Michigan is tech-savvy and visionary. It is also doable—structurally, legally, and financially. “

...Similar plans have worked in other places, albeit on a smaller scale. Chattanooga built its own municipal broadband service and subsequently experienced an economic boom. Unemployment dropped, wages grew, and manufacturers—notably Volkswagen—moved to the city. “We know that the wage rise is linked to internet jobs and particularly the technology sector,” the city’s mayor told The Tennessean in 2016.

“It’s an explosion of growth in our technology sector,” he added. “That has sparked not only this (downtown) living but restaurants and bars and music and the quality of life that truly makes a city interesting, cool, hip, vibrant and energetic.” Chattanooga’s service was, however, blocked from expanding beyond the city by state legislators and the program was eventually stifled by the FCC, limiting its impact outside the city....

In Cuba there is barely any internet. Anything but the state-run TV channels is prohibited. Publications are limited to the state-approved newspapers and magazines. This is the law. But, in typical Cuban fashion, the law doesn't stop a vast underground system of entertainment and news media distributors and consumers.

"El Paquete Semanal" (The Weekly Package) is a weekly trove of digital content—everything from American movies to PDFs of Spanish newspapers—that is gathered, organized and transferred by a human web of runners and dealers to the entire country. It is a prodigious and profitable operation.

I went behind the scenes in Havana to film how the Paquete works. Check out the video above to see how Cubans bypass censorship to access the media we take for granted.