Net Neutrality Called a Modern Civil Rights Issue
Phone and cable companies are pulling out all the stops to defend their markets and defeat net neutrality rules, ColorOfChange.org Executive Director James Rucker said Thursday. At a panel on broadband at the Netroots Nation conference, attended by liberal activists from across the U.S., he called net neutrality a “modern civil rights issue.”
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"Industry is fighting tooth and nail to make sure that the FCC can’t institute these protections,” Rucker said. “They're using false arguments. They've also enlisted civil rights advocates. They've enlisted black and brown members of Congress to make arguments about net neutrality.” Rucker warned the advocates attending the conference they need to respond. “What’s at stake is huge, but the public is not I think well enough informed and definitely not broadly enough engaged to counter what industry is doing.”
Rucker said some civil rights groups that oppose net neutrality rules receive significant amounts of money from communications companies. “I don’t think it’s the kind of thing where [corporations] are saying, ‘hey, we've given you this much money, you need to be on our side,’ because they don’t have to,” he said. These groups say, “`They're our friends, we kind of trust them.’ But what goes along with that is a lot of money.”
The FCC and Congress hear from industry about net neutrality much more often than from the kinds of groups represented at Netroots, said Amalia Deloney, grassroots policy director at the Center for Media Justice. “The kinds of messages that they hear are those that are really alarming and concerning,” she said. “Primarily what they hear are messages around job loss. … Everyone knows that we're in a severe economic crisis and have been for awhile. … It’s really on all of us to use the power of the Netroots to communicate at the grassroots level” and “we need to get more clear on what our message is,” she said.
An open Internet is important to Deloney and Rucker and those they represent. “For the work I do it’s critical as an organizing platform,” Rucker said. “It’s critical for journalists who are marginalized in terms of not being able to participate in mainstream journalism because they're speaking to too small of an audience, the things they have to say are too controversial,” she said. “It’s blossomed into a place where those folks can have a voice."
The Internet is hugely important to immigrants, especially as border restrictions are tightened, said Deloney, who works with that community. “Whether it’s sending pictures back and forth to family members, whether it’s being able to virtually participate … in some kind of ceremony that’s happening at home, all of this is part and parcel of how we interact with the Internet and the role it plays in our lives."
The fight over the Arizona immigration law highlighted the importance of the Internet as a grassroots organizing tool, Deloney said. “We were getting real-time information and updates about what was going on in that state and we were able to figure out multiple ways that we could plug in and support the organizing -- out of a sense of solidarity, out of concern for our families and friends and more importantly out of a concern that this sort of legislation would move to other states in the country."