Racial justice advocates claimed a small but crucial victory today as the Senate voted in favor of the Congressional Review Act (CRA), taking an important step towards preserving a free and open internet for people of color and other vulnerable communities online. The Senate, with bipartisan support, voted 52-47 to pass the CRA following weeks of organizing and demands by civil rights groups — including the Center for Media Justice.

If the CRA passes in the House next, it would overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to end Net Neutrality rules, which takes effect in June. Rep. Mike Doyle has introduced a CRA on the House side which currently has 160 sponsors and is supported by a majority of the members of the Congressional Black, Hispanic, Asian Pacific and Native American Caucuses.

Erin Shields, National Field Organizer for Internet Rights at the Center for Media Justice, has this to say:

“Communities of color have been at the forefront of the fight for net neutrality for years, and today’s vote was a direct result of that consensus building work centered on racial, economic, and media justice. While we are excited to see the bipartisan support in the Senate today — to keep the internet free and open — we can’t afford to rest. We’re looking to members of the Tri-Caucus now to rise to the moment and take up this civil rights fight in the House.

Without an open internet, people of color wouldn’t be able to organize across communities, borders, and even the world. In the Trump era, this freedom is more vital than it has ever been — and we must protect it.”

This afternoon in Sacramento, CA, our Organizing Director delivered a version of the following words during a hearing on California’s net neutrality bill, SB 822: 

Members of the Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee, I’d like to thank you for giving me an opportunity to offer some remarks today. My name is Steven Renderos and I’m the Organizing Director at the Center for Media Justice. The Center for Media Justice is an Oakland-based racial justice action center that fights for the digital rights of poor people and people of color in the United States. We host the nation’s largest racial justice network for media, technology and cultural change. We have 100 member organizations across the country with 21 of those based here in California.

The Center for Media Justice and our network members have advocated for Net Neutrality for the last 10 years, including fighting for the strong protections in the 2015 Open Internet Order. As this committee is aware, those protections were rescinded on June 11th by Trump’s FCC, which is why I’m here today. Before it was gutted last week, SB 822 would have brought back those same open internet protections for Californians. I am here to urge this committee to move this bill forward and support all efforts to restore the original protections in SB 822.

I come not just as a long-time advocate, but as someone who embodies the promise of an open Internet. As the child of Salvadoran immigrants, raised by a single mother in Koreatown in Los Angeles, I know the value of opportunity. My mom worked a subpar job, spending 25 years as a garment worker. Her wages only afforded us subpar housing, a 1 bedroom apartment shared with another family. I attended a subpar elementary school which to this day is rated below average in the state. My mother shopped at a subpar grocery store with meats and vegetables nearing their expiration dates.

But I was afforded opportunities others in my neighborhood were not. I went from attending a bad school to one of the best schools in the country. Thanks to my mother’s sacrifice I was the first person on my block to have a computer with Internet access. I then became the first person in my family to attend college.

I know what it means to live a second class existence. But I also know how powerful the Internet can be to overcome structural barriers to success. The Center for Media Justice fights for Net Neutrality, not because we care about what happens to bits and bytes, but because in the 21st century, Net Neutrality is a civil rights struggle.

For those outraged by the separation of immigrant families, the Internet is where they channel outrage and move politicians to act. For Black activists tired of seeing unarmed Black bodies being killed by police, be it Stephon Clark here in Sacramento or Antwon Rose in East Pittsburgh, the Internet allows them to document this violence and seek justice. For members of queer and trans communities, the Internet is one of the few safe spaces to connect to one another.

Before it was amended, SB 822 comprehensively protected marginalized voices. But I need to highlight a protection in the original bill that is crucial to the Center for Media Justice. SB 822 would’ve eliminated the most egregious forms of an often discriminatory practice known as “zero-rating”. These harmful zero-rating schemes push Internet customers to use the websites and applications chosen by their Internet Service Provider (ISP) and in exchange customers are not charged for the data they use on those websites. ISPs incentivize customers to use their chosen websites by keeping data caps low and unlimited data plans expensive.

Some argue that these zero-rated plans are good for communities of color. I say that discrimination of any form is never good for people of color. Plans like AT&T’s zero-rating of its cable-TV service, DirectTV, are dangerous because they create a second class experience online and make it harder for our voices, which are not on DirectTV, to be heard. My cousin, an AT&T customer, routinely runs out of data every month due to overpriced data plans with artificially low caps. In countries where self-serving zero-rating schemes are banned, data caps go up and unlimited plans become cheaper.

Communities of color and low-income communities deserve an equal experience online. Feminist theorist, bell hooks, once said that “when you are thirsty, you want water. It does not matter in that moment whether it’s dirty or clean. Our job is not to carry dirty water. It’s not to ask communities to choose between a drink or thirst.” An Internet where an ISP’s own content is zero-rated but our voices are not, is dirty water. It is my job as an advocate and your job as leaders in this state to ensure that the Internet the residents of this state have access to is clean, open and abundant. I urge this committee to move SB 822 forward and fight to bring back the critical protections removed last week. Thank you.

“Microsoft is approaching a day of reckoning. They’ve gained millions while hundreds of families have lost their children. The company must now make a choice – either help ICE continue to destroy families, or take action and cancel their contract. In the face of such inhumanity there is no other way,” said Steven Renderos, Organizing Director at Center for Media Justice.

Check out our petition here and read the full press release here.

Civil rights groups, including the Center for Media Justice (CMJ), applauded the agreement between California legislators yesterday to move forward with a bill which would ensure the strongest state-level net neutrality protections in the nation. After the original version of SB 822 was gutted in a committee hearing two weeks ago – in a move to appease corporations like AT&T – communities of color led a massive public outcry demanding a restoration of strict rules defending a free and open internet. The announcement that those crucial protections have been restored to the bill represents a win for vulnerable communities in the state who rely on net neutrality to make their voices heard worldwide.

Sign the Petition: Tell the California Assembly to pass SB 822.

From the outcry over the “Muslim Ban” to the fight against family separations at the border, these communities are actively using the open internet to organize resistance to the rising authoritarianism of the Trump administration. Here’s what our own, Steven Renderos, the Center for Media Justice’s Organizing Director who delivered a public testimony in Sacramento last week in favor of revitalizing SB 822, had to say:

“Since the Trump FCC repealed Net Neutrality, people of color across the country have been fighting to restore an open Internet at the state level. California held the greatest promise to deliver the golden standard of protections and this announcement is a step in that direction. We await to see the official language of the bill but applaud the efforts of Senator Weiner, Senator De Leon and Assemblymember Santiago in restoring the vital protections that Californians deserve. We’re especially encouraged by the ban on the most discriminatory forms of zero-rating which are especially harmful to low-income families and people of color. We are in a moment of crisis in this country with a federal administration that has demonstrated its capacity for inhumanity. Against this backdrop, the ability of marginalized people to dissent is of greater urgency than ever. We cannot fight to end the separation of families and to #AbolishICE if we can’t be heard online.”

Take Action: Help Save Net Neutrality in California

After months of grassroots organizing and lobbying from activists, organizers, policy advocates, and Internet users themselves, the California State Senate last week finally passed SB 822, the most comprehensive net neutrality bill in the country. The bill seeks to stop the blocking and throttling of lawful traffic online, and prevent Internet service providers from implementing paid prioritization schemes—but it still needs one more signature before it becomes the law across the State.

That’s why today, alongside 19 allies and members of our Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net), we sent a letter to the desk of California Governor Jerry Brown, demanding that he provide that final approval.

Read the letter here.

The groups joining us in signing onto this letter include 18MillionRising.org, Access Humboldt, Asian Americans Advancing Justice – CA, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Color Of Change, Common Cause, CreaTV San Jose, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Forward Together, The Greenlining Institute, Media Action Center, Media Alliance, Muslim Advocates, Right To The City Alliance, RYSE Center, Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, and TURN – The Utility Reform Network.

The Center for Media Justice has worked for months with groups like Fight for the Future to drive phone calls to state legislators in California, coordinated sign-on letters, and co-led grassroots lobbying efforts with Color of Change in Sacramento, urging senators and assembly members to consider the civil rights and racial justice impacts of an Internet without Net Neutrality. In June our own Steven Renderos testified to the California Senate, during a hearing on SB 822:

“I know what it means to live a second class existence. But I also know how powerful the Internet can be to overcome structural barriers to success. The Center for Media Justice fights for Net Neutrality, not because we care about what happens to bits and bytes, but because in the 21st century, Net Neutrality is a civil rights struggle.”

In addition to our continued efforts on the West Coast, last Monday we filed an amicus brief as part of a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission, citing racial justice concerns with their decision to repeal Net Neutrality nationwide last year. We remain confident that joined by the voices of so many leaders, Gov. Brown will hear our calls and sign SB 822 as soon as possible—helping to sustain the momentum behind eventually restoring a free and open Internet for people of color across the country.

This morning, Facebook released an update on its civil rights audit, citing changes the company made ahead of the mid-term elections to address voter suppression. The update doesn’t address the concerns civil rights groups have raised around censorship and hate speech.

Steven Renderos, Senior Campaigns Director at MediaJustice, added this:

“While we appreciate the progress Facebook has made during the civil rights audit, recent news reports have shown that we cannot trust this company to regulate itself. Time and time again, despite vague promises of change, Facebook has chosen to ignore the safety concerns of communities of color. Instead, its leaders, including VP Joel Kaplan, actively worked to discredit our allies and give cover to the hate groups which use their platforms to organize. Their choices have put already vulnerable people in further danger—something which Facebook has long known and has been given countless opportunities to correct. Today’s update on their civil rights audit is too little too late. Facebook must overhaul its board immediately, remove Kaplan, and take significant steps towards real accountability for the harm it continues to cause our communities.”

Sign our petition here.

Read more about our demands at Colorlines.

Good evening,

My name is Adrian Martinez and I am a Membership Organizer with the Center for Media Justice. We are a national organizing and advocacy hub fighting for the rights of poor people and people of color in the digital age, and we believe the right to communicate belongs to everyone.

I am here today to share my comments in opposition of the proposed T-Mobile /Sprint merger. I am a T-Mobile customer, and am concerned about the impacts that this merger will have on poor people, communities of color, workers, and rural communities. There are four major wireless providers: AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. Their combined customer base covers over 95% of wireless subscribers in the United States. I’m here to share the three reasons I believe this merger should not be approved.

First, prices for cell phone users will go up. Competition and choice have lowered prices in the mobile market and have helped close the digital divide in mobile internet and cell phone adoption. AT&T and Verizon each control about one third of the mobile market. These carriers have found that ignoring the connectivity needs of low-income customers is good for their bottom line. That competition, however, has pushed T-Mobile and Sprint to compete for those customers. Both of these carriers also compete in the mobile resale market. Mobile resellers buy access from the big carriers and resell that access in the pre-paid cell market. These pre-paid brands, like Boost and Metro PCS are owned by T-Mobile and Sprint. Boost and Metro PCS are vital to ensuring affordable access to the mobile internet especially since many of these plans don’t require credit checks to purchase them. These two mobile giants want to merge in order to compete with AT&T and Verizon at the expense of their low-income customers.

Second, this merger will primarily affect people of color. Fifty-six percent of T-Mobile’s customers are people of color, as are close to half of Sprint’s, and they are disproportionately living on low incomes. The CPUC reported in March 2017 that an estimated 2 million Californians utilize LifeLine federal benefits and T-Mobiles needs to hold their promise to continue and even expand LifeLine discounted services. The proposed merger will reduce competition for these customers and exacerbate the digital divide—leaving our communities even more disconnected than they already are. Third, Free Press reports that the merger would impact workers leading to more than 28,000 job losses across the country.

Mobile internet and cell phone connections are critical in this digital age as they connect us to our families, keep us connected to work, health care, education, and other resources. I use my phone every single day to connect. I have an invisible disability and rely on my cell phone to keep me safe. In case of a medical emergency, my phone can alert my medical health team and share my location with loved ones within seconds. My family and so many other families cannot afford for our bills to go up or for data connections to change. People in the U.S. already pay the most in the world for wireless data plans.

As an advocate for racial and economic justice, I understand that phones can be a mechanism for change through social media, mobile internet connection, and it gives the ability to connect to organizers and advocates across time zones. As Center for Media Justice Executive Director Malkia Cyril says, “Our voices online can help save our voices offline”.

Center for Media Justice alongside our partners at CWA, Free Press, The Utility Reform Network, Media Alliance, and elsewhere say no to this merger and demand that the CPUC intervene on behalf of our communities statewide.

Sign the petition to stop the T-Mobile/Sprint merger here.