net neutrality ain’t no joke: mobilize now to protect it

By Arielle Gray, AFROPUNK Contributor

As a Black activist & artist who primarily works with and in communities of color, hearing about the plans to repeal Net Neutrality made my heart drop. I teamed up with two other Black activists, Charity Everett, of GoBackFetchIt and Destiny Polk of Radical Black Girl to put together a video explaining why Net Neutrality is so important to us and our communities.

This week, the FCC is gearing up to repeal #NetNeutrality, and it could completely change the internet as we know it. If you haven’t heard about Net Neutrality and its importance to communities & activists of color, you should keep reading.

If Net Neutrality is repealed, you probably wouldn’t be able to even access this article at your leisure. In fact, Net Neutrality has already been violated numerous times by large companies & corporations.

Net Neutrality is a series of a laws enacted during the Obama administration in 2015 that essentially protect an open internet. Millions of activists pressured the Federal Communications Commission to adopt these policies that prevent large companies & corporations (like Comcast, AT&T & Verizon for example) from surcharging for things like increased bandwidth, faster internet times & access to certain sites & applications.

These laws prevent the “gatekeepers” of the internet from capitalizing & monopolizing off of their internet services. Net Neutrality began as a social justice issue and now that the FCC is trying to repeal it, it needs to become a social justice issue once again.

Trump appointed FCC chairman Ajit Pai (and former Verizon lawyer) first introduced the plans to repeal Net Neutrality in May, and since then lobbyists from large cable & phone providers and ISP (Internet Service Providers) have fought to make sure that it goes through. ISPs and companies who control internet service would have the most to gain from the repeal of Net Neutrality- it would give them the ability to not only charge more for faster, more comprehensive internet service, it would also give them the ability to block & censor content they disagree with.

If Net Neutrality is repealed, the internet as we know it is over.

Activists could potentially lose access to their platforms and their ability to reach millions of people online. For example, if Comcast doesn’t agree with Afropunk’s content, they could block the site from their users or even slow down service to Afropunk’s site. ISPs could also prevent you from downloading apps that compete with their content and force you to pay to access applications like Facebook, Twitter & even your email. Can you imagine if everyone had to pay extra to access Twitter? Hashtags like #BlackLivesMatter & #FreeCyntoiaBrown would loose their vitality and would reach considerably less people.

If you want to see what happens when Net Neutrality is gone, take a look at Portugal where their citizens have to buy the internet in “packages”. In Portugal, having internet access isn’t enough—you must pay extra to even use sites like Facebook, Youtube, GMail & Netflix.

Small businesses would invariably be affected as well. Many entrepreneurs & start ups rely on an open internet to spread word of their services, build their clientele and conduct businesses. Repealing Net Neutrality would rob small businesses of the ability to compete with larger companies, who’d be able to afford to pay for paid prioritization service from their ISPs.

Repealing Net Neutrality would only deepen economic divisions, decrease access to information and could devastate communities of color, who already experience disparity in income in comparison to their white counterparts. It would mean loosing our freedom of speech on the internet, our freedom to communicate with whomever we choose and our freedom to access knowledge.

The FCC votes on December 14th. Luckily there are some things you can do, if you haven’t already, to join the fight.

1. Share the video above
2. Sign the petition
3. Join the Break The Internet Online Protest today (December 12th)
4. Call your state representatives & senators (Congress) and demand the survival of Net Neutrality. You can find your rep’s info, depending on your state, here.
5. Call & Tweet FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and tell him you are against the repeal of Net Neutrality.

Video filmed & edited by TrendStream Media.