Open Letter: “Together We Can Close the Digital Divide and Maintain An Open Internet”

Editors Note:  The following guest post is written by Commissioner Robert Steele, President of the National Association of Black County Officials, an organization representing thousands of African American county and local elected and appointed officials nationwide.  He drafted the following open letter in response to Malkia A. Cyril’s recent post on Huffington Post, A New Civil Rights Mandate: Champion Open Networks To Close the Digital Divide, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/malkia-a-cyril/a-new-civil-rights-mandat_b_462110.html

Ms. Cyril deserves much respect for joining the dialogue about the open Internet.  She shares the same goals as the national African American civil rights and elected officials’ organizations — preserve the open Internet while achieving universal broadband adoption.  We don’t think this is an either/or proposition.  We believe that the FCC can do both.

For years, we have championed an open Internet.  We have opposed blocking or discrimination against legal content, devices and applications. We have supported competition and transparency.  But we are concerned – legitimately so – that poorly designed network management regulations could lock in place the digital divide.  That would be unacceptable.

Ms Cyril has called on a “new generation” of civil rights leaders to promote the FCC’s current version of network neutrality.  I ask that she expand that call.  I believe that collectively the veteran soldiers and new warriors must work together.  We should not focus on promoting the FCC’s agenda but should focus on promoting equal digital opportunities for all minorities and the underserved.

For the past three generations, new issues were pushed by young leaders who felt that the priorities of earlier generations — equal employment, fair housing, good schools and the right to vote – ought to be broadened.  In doing so, new leaders took four steps that I would encourage Ms. Cyril and her colleagues to take as well.

First, earlier generations of young leaders worked closely with civil rights veterans to find common ground.  Before SNCC inaugurated the Black Power Movement in 1966, its leaders had marched, gone to jail, and put their lives on the line as foot soldiers for the SCLC.  SNCC earned the right to push Dr. King to do more to oppose the Vietnam War.  And in 1969, when Black Efforts for Soul in Television (BEST) fought for positive images in the electronic and print media, it reached out to the NAACP, Urban League and SCLC and showed them how new FCC EEO and minority ownership rules would help get the Movement’s message out to the people.  Ms. Cyril and her colleagues should consider emulating SNCC’s and BEST’s examples of collaboration and shared sacrifice.  They should begin to work with us on the great issues of minority participation in media ownership and employment at the FCC.  And they should condemn those who have waged a campaign of ad hominem attacks on national civil rights leaders’ intelligence, integrity and independence. That divide and conquer strategy belongs to the right wing – not to progressives.

Second, earlier young leaders demonstrated clearly how their cause would address a clear danger to minorities.  In the 1980s, the Environmental Justice movement’s young leaders produced research showing how siting high-pollution facilities in minority communities was leading to the death and disability of hundreds of thousands of minorities.  And with access to broadband, too much is at stake to rely on idealism alone.  Thus we hope Ms. Cyril and her colleagues would join us in asking the FCC to produce research — if it exists — that rebuts economists’ findings that disincentivizing deployment (and thus adoption) and shifting costs from wealthy cost-causers to low and middle income consumers — the entirely predictable outcomes of some elements of net neutrality — will nonetheless be good for low income consumers.

Third, earlier young leaders got their facts right.  Our filings at the FCC have been clear: carriers should not be able to block or discriminate against legal content.  And we do not want network management practices that will harm consumers and small content providers.

And fourth, earlier generations of leaders held government accountable.  Ms. Cyril holds up the current FCC as a champion of civil rights — a distinction it has not yet earned.  On February 17 twenty-three groups – net neutrality supporters and skeptics – sent a letter to Chairman Genachowski pointing out that in 2009 the FCC failed to adopt a single pro-civil rights regulation — a feat the FCC hasn’t replicated since 1983.  Their full letter appears at http://tinyurl.com/yamav4n.  The groups highlight that the FCC’s record was full of non-achievement:  the FCC did not provide any resources to combat no-urban and no-Spanish advertising dictates, and there was virtually no EEO enforcement, no action on dozens of pending proposals to advance minority media ownership, and no defense of the only remaining minority media and telecom ownership initiative, the Telecom Development Fund, which the proposed federal budget proposes to zero out.  With this track record, why would anyone think that today’s FCC can be trusted to write net neutrality rules that will close the digital divide?

Our hope at the FCC is Commissioner Mignon Clyburn.  Commissioner Clyburn shares our goal that broadband adoption and use should be the FCC’s first priority, but has asked us to all ensure that cyberpreneurs are provided the tools and opportunities they need to get online and operate successfully.   We think her request is a fair one.   We are rolling up our sleeves, working with cyberpreneurs to develop a proposal that meets their needs and delivers the universal adoption that most minority cyberpreneurs need in order to reach their audiences and customers.  We ask that new Internet activists join us.  We also ask that you support our request that the FCC ensure that low income consumers are not asked to carry the costs of high income, high volume users.

This is not a cross-generational fight.  Instead it pits veteran civil rights organizations’ time-tested skepticism, research, and thoughtfulness against a Palinesque mantra of “take it on faith.”  The open Internet is far too important for guesswork.

Category: Featured, News | Tags: broadband, Digital Divide, malkia a cyril, national association of black county officials, National Broadband Plan, Net Neutrality, robert steele