Pushed the Senate to Save Net Neutrality

The fight to restore Net Neutrality broke through in a big way, engaging millions more people and showing up everywhere from a Burger King ad to a Jeopardy! question that mentioned us.

It makes sense: No matter what you care about — racial justice, the environment, immigrant rights, a stronger democracy — you need Net Neutrality to share your story and fight for what you believe in.

But because of the FCC’s disastrous vote in 2017, Net Neutrality is no longer the law of the land.

In the campaign to restore Net Neutrality, you helped us push the Senate to pass a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to overturn the FCC’s terrible ruling.

Three Republican senators joined the entire Democratic Caucus in passing the CRA, and achieving this kind of bipartisan victory in a polarized political climate required months of grassroots organizing and inside-the-Beltway advocacy.

The win caught the big internet service providers by surprise: They went all out to torpedo a companion bill in the House. The bill nonetheless drew the support of 182 House members.

While this fell short of the 218 needed to force a vote by year’s end, we have a lot of hope for 2019: At least 70 percent of first-term Democrats have already publicly stated their support for real Net Neutrality, and plans are underway to introduce a new bill to bring back strong open-internet rules.

Net Neutrality has become a huge issue all across the country: More than 125 U.S. mayors signed on to a pledge requiring all internet providers that do business with their cities to respect Net Neutrality.

Meanwhile, 37 states put forth legislation or resolutions rejecting the FCC decision, and California, Oregon, Vermont and Washington signed new state-level protections into law. And the governors of six states signed executive orders requiring any ISP wishing to do business with their states to adhere to the 2015 Net Neutrality standards.

Passed the Civic Info Bill

The pioneering legislation we conceived and drafted establishes a nonprofit consortium that will use public funds to award grants to local media in a state that’s long suffered the effects of media consolidation. This is the first time in U.S. history that any state has supported local journalism in this way.

After approving $5 million in the state budget for the consortium, Gov. Phil Murphy signed the bill into law in August — but a spending dispute with the legislature has jeopardized the funding. We’re working with the thousands of people who have taken action in this campaign to push the governor to fully fund the effort in 2019.

Stopped Sinclair

Outsized corporate power is threatening safety and democracy, and some corporations are spreading dangerous viewpoints and erasing local voices.

One of the main culprits: The Sinclair Broadcast Group.

We helped defeat this pro-Trump propaganda machine when it tried to buy Tribune Media, a deal that would have forced local-TV stations reaching 72 percent of U.S. households to broadcast right-wing, racist and Islamophobic content. Our advocacy, communications, organizing and legal teams helped push the FCC to derail the merger, a decision that prompted Tribune to back out.

For a deal once viewed as inevitable, this was a monumental victory.

Blocking the T-Mobile/Sprint Merger

We’re rallying opposition to T-Mobile’s bid to take over Sprint.

The two companies have helped spur competition in the mobile market by offering low-cost plans, but that will end if the FCC approves this deal.

The merger would leave us with just three major mobile carriers, giving T-Mobile the power to set prices as it sees fit. That would mean higher prices for everyone, with disastrous consequences for poor people and people of color, who disproportionately rely on T-Mobile and Sprint for more affordable internet access and prepaid services.

What’s more, this deal could lead to job losses for close to 30,000 people working at T-Mobile and Sprint stores.

We’re highlighting this merger’s many harms in our formal challenge at the FCC, and our legal team is debunking the two companies’ claims about the deal’s alleged benefits.

Free Press members took to the streets to speak out, staging Halloween-themed Monster Merger protests outside T-Mobile and Sprint stores.

Protecting Lifeline

Not long after Trump appointed him to head the FCC, Chairman Ajit Pai claimed he would strive to close the digital divide. Instead, he’s done the exact opposite.

From the get-go, he went after the Lifeline program, which helps people living in poverty afford phone and internet access, and in 2018 he introduced a proposal to gut this essential resource. We’ve led a broad coalition opposing this cruel plan and showed how it would harm seniors, people of color, people with disabilities, domestic-violence survivors, people living on tribal lands, unhoused people and veterans.

In October, we held a speakout in front of the FCC that brought together activists, advocates and Lifeline subscribers for two hours of powerful testimony. Our advocacy throughout the year paid off: The agency never held a vote on Pai’s proposal. We’ll keep fighting in 2019 to ensure the chairman shelves it for good.

Disrupting Online Hate

From the neo-Nazis and racists who rioted and murdered an activist in Charlottesville to the man who massacred 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue, we’ve seen how the hate that pervades the internet can have tragic real-life consequences.

Over the past year, Free Press, the Center for American Progress, Color Of Change, the Southern Poverty Law Center and other allies studied how to disrupt hateful activities online. In October, we launched the Change the Terms campaign, which more than 50 public-interest groups endorsed. We’re urging companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter to adopt the model corporate policies and terms of service we’ve developed. These policies are intended to curb online hate while preserving freedom of speech and protecting marginalized communities when they speak out.

With growing public anxiety about the platforms — and heightened political scrutiny — we’re at a moment where meaningful change is possible, and numerous internet companies are coming to the table to talk about how they can confront hate. We’ll track the progress of companies in adopting these efforts and will issue a report card in 2019.

Restoring Net Neutrality Protections

Chairman Pai and the two other Republican commissioners voted in 2017 to end Net Neutrality, ignoring the voices of tens of millions of people and handing control of the internet to companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon.

But Pai won’t have the last word on Net Neutrality. We’re suing the FCC on the basis of its broken process, flawed legal reasoning, rejection of evidence that contradicts its preordained conclusions and absolute disregard for public input. Our attorney argued the case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in February 2019, and we expect the court to hand down its ruling later in the year.

Preserving Local Media

In 2017, Ajit Pai dismantled a range of media-ownership limits. Without these essential rules, which govern how much media a company can own in a given market, it’s only a matter of time before the next toxic deal threatens local journalism.

We sued to overturn the FCC’s decision in the same federal court where we’ve twice beaten the agency when it previously tried to weaken the rules.

In fact, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals has repeatedly told the FCC it can’t change its ownership rules unless it first examines how media consolidation affects ownership opportunities for diverse communities. Once again, the agency ignored this guidance.

We’re committed to pushing the FCC to create policies that will boost media ownership among women and people of color and create opportunities for local owners who are committed to actually serving their communities.

Organizing Around the News

News Voices is showing how an approach grounded in organizing can benefit newsrooms and the communities that have been underserved for far too long.

Our News Voices: North Carolina project deepened its relationships in both Charlotte and Rocky Mount. We co-hosted monthly discussions in which residents and Charlotte Observer reporters explored ways to ensure local journalism reflects a range of local perspectives. Capping off a series of community dinners and workshops we held in Rocky Mount throughout the year, in November we organized a “dream salon” in the city to give residents the space to collectively brainstorm about the local news they want to see. We’re ramping up our work in both communities in 2019.

In addition to campaigning to pass the Civic Info Bill, our News Voices: New Jersey team co-hosted a workshop in Atlantic City focused on building trust and pushing back on negative narratives about the city. Later in the year we held a standing-room-only event in Camden to discuss community-centered approaches to local-news coverage, and ways to bridge the gap between newsrooms and residents.

News Voices also teamed up with the public-TV station WLVT in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, to teach organizing techniques to new reporters. We worked with housing organizers in New York City on how to forge long-term relationships with local news outlets. And we prepared to launch a collaboration in two Philadelphia neighborhoods with journalists and community groups that will train organizers in 2019.

Seeking Justice for Puerto Rico

Internet and mobile-phone access remains a crucial issue in Puerto Rico more than a year after Hurricanes Irma and Maria left nearly the entire population without service.

As many as 5,000 people died as a result of the storms, and the inability to make lifesaving calls for help contributed to the death toll. Free Press is urging the FCC to appoint an independent commission to fully analyze the roots of the communications crisis — and to ensure that something like this never happens again.

We’re also forging strong connections with people in Puerto Rico. We collected more than 100 residents’ stories and submitted them to the FCC in comments we coauthored with the National Hispanic Media Coalition. And in October, a group of Free Press staffers and allies visited the islands and co-hosted “story circles” to build community and imagine what a fair and resilient communications system there would look like.

We’ll return to Puerto Rico in 2019, and we’re looking to host story circles in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and the Bronx, both of which have large Puerto Rican communities.

And we’re showing how the FCC’s Lifeline proposal threatens Puerto Rico: More than 300,000 households there could have their service disrupted if Chairman Pai succeeds in gutting this essential service.

For Puerto Ricans on the long road to rebuild and recover, saving the Lifeline program is crucial.

Commitment to Racial Equity

Systemic racism in the media and a lack of inclusion in the policymaking process are huge barriers to people achieving full participation in our democracy.

That’s why several years ago we committed to centering race in our work and building toward becoming a true multiracial organization. We’re shifting internal practices to create an equitable organizational culture and are making racial justice a core part of all of our campaigns, including new strategic initiatives we launched in 2018, such as our Change the Terms campaign and our work in Puerto Rico.

We’re continuing to diversify our staff, and we’re supporting the leadership and success of people of color at Free Press.

Innovation

Our new website, which we unveiled last March, is designed to better define who we are and engage more people than ever before.

It’s one of the many tech tools we used in 2018 to support our campaigns. We also launched our first-ever podcast, The Connection, which features Free Press staffers, activists, lawmakers, media-makers and community members who are fighting for our rights to connect and communicate. Topics covered so far include news coverage of immigration and racism in the media.

We also presented a series of webinars and livestreams for activists and fellow advocates on topics ranging from Net Neutrality to the Sinclair-Tribune merger to Puerto Rico’s communications crisis.

One of our most powerful webinars marked the 50th anniversary of the landmark Kerner Commission report, which critiqued the media for its role in fomenting racism.

Our field team used peer-to-peer texting tools to mobilize activists in our campaign to pass the Net Neutrality Congressional Review Act. These strategies enabled our members to organize more than 1,200 protests and other actions in their communities and push their lawmakers to support the CRA.