BREAKING: Senate Can Still Save Net Neutrality -- Every Voice is Critical - Dec 21 2017 edition

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See there? All of us, working together, ARE MAKING A DIFFERENCE!

Amidst the widely-repeated reports that net neutrality is dead, due to the FCC's 3-2 vote last week? And even the funeral bouquets lining the sidewalk in front of FCC headquarters? Not so fast. As we reported, if enough of us demanded that Congress act, our US Senators and Representatives would feel the heat. We did, and they have.

The US Senate will take a vote that can reverse the FCC handover of the web to the corporate capitalists.

The House and Senate still CAN SAVE net neutrality by passing a "resolution of disapproval" to nullify the FCC's actions and restore net neutrality rules.

That is fully within our reach. Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer announced Thursday afternoon that he "will force a vote" on whether to overturn the FCC's repeal. While the Democrats are the minority, the Republicans are feeling the heat, so we very well might have the votes to win.(1)

Already, because so many of us have let Washington hear from us, we know we DO HAVE at least one Republican on our side -- more on who that is in a moment. Point is, continued efforts can bring more, since 2018 is a Congressional election year -- and many incumbents have plenty of reason to fear losing their seats.

Doug Jones's surprise victory in the special election for a US Senate seat in Alabama is one key -- it means we need to pick-up only ONE MORE VOTE to pass the necessary resolution in the Senate.

But we're not there yet. We must keep up the pressure on both houses of Congress. (How to contact your Senators and Representatives is just ahead.)

Since the FCC passed Chairman Ajit Pai's proposal last week to REPEAL NET NEUTRALITY and make the internet about money instead of people, the corporate capitalists and banksters are poised to take over with their self-serving profit plans that mix censorship and promotion. And that Orwellian specter will go into effect unless Congress steps in.

Corporate America salivates at the notion of controlling all you see and hear. Telecom giants Comcast and Verizon are poised to slow and even block content on the internet -- anything that doesn't present them with maximized profit. And Google -- which already has a track record of blocking non-Google-empire sites from web searches, while giving prominent placement to those who bribe them -- will join every other communications megagiant and every ISP in being legally empowered to charge extra if you, individually, want even a shadow of what we all enjoy now. Basic services will not include the free-range access we have all come to enjoy, to expect, indeed to rely upon. Indie sites that compete with the ones owned or controlled or bribed by Big Money will be "disappeared." That's not speculation, because we are already beginning to experience it to the extent they think they can get away with it.

Unless the Congress reverses the FCC, those of us who can't afford to pay extra -- or who refuse to pay the extortionists who would, even then, block an unknown amount of content from being accessible to us, simply because it challenges their empires -- will find ourselves relegated to the cyber slums of an internet slow lane, where modern, graphics-laden websites are unable to load.

CONGRESS CAN STILL STOP ALL THAT FROM HAPPENING.

More than 70% of American voters -- including Republicans -- support net neutrality.

And it turns out that a large number of the public comments happily cited by Ajit Pai to justify his murder of net neutrality? Well, we now have the proof that many or most of those "submitted" in favor of the repeal of net neutrality were actually made by bots using stolen identities.(2)

This is, and has been, a power play by those too rich to play honestly, too big to fail at anything where they feel entitled to rule.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, "himself a former Verizon lawyer, was so hell-bent on ramming this through that he wouldn't even pause to allow an investigation of the phony comments."(3)

We can add those phony comments to what we tell Congress in our list of reasons to act.

If -- IF -- we mobilize enough public support, we can pressure Congress to pass this "resolution of disapproval" that will un-do the power grab. We CAN still win.

Of course, the numbers are everything. Every Democrat in the Senate is expected to vote to overturn the FCC's rule, and Senator Susan Collins (R, Maine) has already come out against the repeal. That's why we need only ONE MORE Senate Republican to listen to his or her constituents.

WE HAVE 60 DAYS to convince Congress to overturn the repeal of net neutrality before it officially goes into effect.

-- Yours in the fight for the open internet! As Lee Camp of "Redacted Tonight" says, "Keep Fighting!"
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CALL or EMAIL your state's TWO US Senators AND your Member of Congress. All the contact info -- Phone, email, and land mail addresses for DC and their local offices -- are all available at the links below.

Here's how:
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✔You can contact the two US SENATORS representing your state, at:

https://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/

(In California, both US Senators are already expected to vote to restore new neutrality, but let them know you expect it, you appreciate their leadership among their colleagues, and you can make calls to any others they suggest.)
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✔ And contact your MEMBER OF CONGRESS by using your postal zip code, at:

http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

(California is represented by a mosaic of Republicans and Democrats, so you cannot assume your Member of Congress will vote to save the internet when this gets to the House of Representatives. Let them hear from you!)

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Sources:

1. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/there-will-be-a-senate-vote-to-reinstate-net-neutrality-schumer-says/

2. https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/18/more-dead-commenters-appear-to-come-out-against-net-neutrality/

3. Courage Campaign staffers wrote much of what we used above. They are Susannah, along with Annie, Brenna, Caitlin, Eddie, Emma, Lindsay, Mahdi, Mary, MJ, Molly, Raquel, Scottie, Tim, and William (the Courage team); you can find more at: www.couragecampaign.org

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