U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley holds town meeting in Iowa, April 2017. Issues raised by constituents included the affordable health care act, bio diesel fuel credits, immigration, and net neutrality, and members of Congress actually working together to do things for the American people and not just for specific parties or special interests. Jerry Mennenga/Press Association. All rights reserved.
On a cold Thursday morning in January, a small
group of advocates gathered outside the imposing edifice of the Federal
Communications Commission in Washington, DC. They opened the trunk of a red
Ford Fusion parked nearby and began unloading more than twenty white banker’s
boxes. Within minutes, they had assembled a makeshift cardboard podium. Inside
the boxes were more than a million signatures collected in just two weeks from
people across the country.
Each person had signed on to an online letter
demanding the FCC protect net neutrality, the democratic principle that
ensures that the internet remains open and free from blocking or throttling of
content by the large phone and cable companies that control high-speed internet
access. Maintaining an open internet is as
fundamental to functioning democracies as protecting free speech rights.
After delivering a few speeches standing behind
the podium, net neutrality advocates carried the boxes across the building’s
threshold and delivered the petitions to the federal agency.
This petition delivery at the FCC was just one
small moment in years of activism both online and in the streets. Over the past
decade, the once obscure issue of net neutrality has grown to draw popular
attention from tens of millions of people of every ideological stripe. It’s an
explosive issue that at the grassroots level bridges political differences. And
while net neutrality protections are currently under threat in Washington – where too many politicians cater to the
needs of the cash-rich phone and cable industry lobby – people beyond the reach
of the capital’s influence industry remain united.
United
behind an Open Internet
At a very basic level everyone agrees that the companies that provide access to
the internet shouldn’t be in the business of controlling the types of
information that flows across the network onto the screens of our cellphones,
tablets, laptops or home computers. Maintaining an open internet is as
fundamental to functioning democracies as protecting free speech rights.
Public polling in the United States shows
strong support for net neutrality protections from both Democratic and
Republican Party voters: a University of Delaware survey found that 85
percent of Republicans and 81 percent of Democrats opposed allowing their
internet access provider to prioritize some web content over others. A similar
poll from the Internet Freedom Business Alliance found a
large majority of self-identified Republicans and conservatives support net
neutrality rules, and are willing to stand alongside Democrats in support of an
open internet.
Net neutrality as an idea is but one part of a
larger global movement of people fighting for internet freedom. It is a
movement that includes democracy activists in Eastern Europe, Arab Spring
protesters in the Middle East and North Africa, and dissident bloggers and
“hacktivists” across Asia. In early 2012, more than ten million people of
differing political views mobilized online and off to defeat the SOPA/PIPA Web
censorship legislation in the United States. In early 2012, more than
ten million people of differing political views mobilized online and off to
defeat the SOPA/PIPA Web censorship legislation in the United States.
Activists on the right and left are using the
open internet to fight unchecked spying and surveillance by the NSA and demand
online privacy and free speech rights. The internet was designed to be an
engine of disintermediation, free speech, and inclusion – a means by which
anyone could route around the gatekeepers, build online communities, and share
information.
It opened the door for new forms of grassroots
political organizing and gave smart online activists an impressive means to
create diverse coalitions, influence policies and shame bad actors in
government.
With only a tiny fraction of the financial
resources of our opponents, internet freedom advocates struggle every day to
preserve this online openness. The very latest threat to net neutrality in the
United States comes from the Trump administration, which is determined to
unwind the protections won under former President Obama.
Strange bedfellows
As politics across the world become even more divisive – as evidenced by recent
elections in the United States and Europe – the key to advancing policies is to
build diverse political support at the grassroots level, and to leverage that
support against policymakers in government who have a tendency to put party
loyalty before the needs and demands of their constituents.
This is certainly the case with net neutrality in
the United States. When we started organizing people around the issue more than
ten years ago we focused on building a coalition of strange political
bedfellows.
While the socially conservative group Christian
Coalition opposes almost every position taken by the progressive activists at
MoveOn they linked arms in support of the open internet – so much so that they took out a full page
ad in the New York Times declaring
their shared view. “When it comes to protecting Internet freedom, the Christian
Coalition and MoveOn respectfully agree,” the ad read. When
we started organizing people around the issue more than ten years ago we
focused on building a coalition of strange political bedfellows.
These two groups had never teamed up on anything
before. Their new alliance on net neutrality surprised so many people in
Washington that one lawmaker remarked: “If you can get these two groups to
agree on an issue, how can it be wrong?”
The Christian Coalition and MoveOn formed the
multifaceted backbone of a net neutrality coalition that included more than a
hundred organizations. Librarians joined with gun owners, musicians with
gardening clubs, racial justice advocates with video gamers, and libertarians
with lefties to demand protections for the open internet.
In turn, these groups mobilized their members to
act. People picked up their phones and called elected representatives in
Congress; they submitted comments into public dockets at the FCC, they
organized house parties to talk about the issue and spoke out at local town
hall meetings; they wrote songs and created online videos in support of
protecting the open internet.
More than 20 million people commented as part of the most recent net neutrality
proceeding before the FCC, breaking all records for public participation in any
matter before the agency. On a few occasions this year, the agency’s online
commenting engine crashed unable to manage the flood of comments.
Building
from the bottom up
The unprecedented growth in grassroots support for net neutrality policies was
so rapid and overwhelming that it has caught Washington politicians off guard.
Many were left scrambling to alter their positions on the issue – from one of
alignment with the powerful phone and cable lobby to positions that favored net
neutrality as a concept but differed on the recommended policy solution.
After ten years of organizing on the issue, the grassroots managed to shift
enough DC policymakers to win landmark net neutrality protections at the FCC.
On February 26, 2015, the agency voted to prohibit phone and cable
companies from blocking and throttling internet content or giving priority
online access to rich companies while relegating the rest of the internet to slow lanes.
It would be hard to overstate just how important this 2015 decision was for
internet users. But nothing in Washington, not even a public-interest win of
such magnitude, is final. The ink had barely dried on the FCC’s Open Internet
Order before phone and cable companies shifted into overdrive. “It falls to
Congress to step in,” said the head of the phone and cable industry’s chief
lobbying group. “The FCC has taken us in a distressing direction. We must now
look to other branches of government for a more balanced resolution.”
The election of Donald Trump in 2016 set wheels in motion to take away the online
freedoms won by a well organized coalition of internet users. Net neutrality
laws put on the books in Brazil, Chile, India and across the European Union
face similar threats from powerful business interests. The
only way to counter these threats is by creating an international, popular
movement for internet freedom.The only way to counter these threats is by creating an international,
popular movement for internet freedom. To mobilize this movement, advocates
must welcome people of all political persuasions. They must be mobilized
through direct outreach at the grassroots, in the personal places where people
formulate their opinions beyond the influences of powerful special interests.
This robust field strategy must be combined with the expert ability to compel
policymakers to side with the public interest.
Whether working for internet freedom in the United States or abroad, advocates
won’t win the right policies without a symbiosis of fieldwork and policy
intelligence. While the fight for net neutrality is far from over, the best
long-term strategy for saving the internet will be to reach across ideological
differences and build from the bottom up.