| Friend,
I have some exciting news to share: After a nearly two-year court battle — Net Neutrality is coming back to California!
Free Press Action is proud of the role we played in helping us get to this moment. For people like you who took action and donated in support of our work around the California Internet Consumer Protection and Net Neutrality Act — this is your victory too.
This is also a victory for the entire country: The implementation of a strong law in the country’s most populous state adds significant momentum to our calls for federal Net Neutrality rules.
It’s an important win to celebrate. And it’s an important moment to remember the dangers posed by the Trump FCC’s repeal of the open-internet rules — and its abdication of the oversight authority the agency once had for internet service providers. Back in 2018, barely two months after former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai repealed Net Neutrality, an untold number of lives were endangered in California when Verizon saw an opportunity to boost its profits … and throttled firefighters’ data during devastating wildfires.1
Since then, we’ve seen what happens when we have an FCC that’s powerless to regulate broadband: The digital divide continues to harm Black and Brown people in disproportionate numbers, Comcast is imposing new data caps and an unknown number of people are being disconnected from a lifesaving service in the middle of a pandemic.
California passed this law to protect its residents from some abuses like this — and after supporters like you joined Free Press Action’s calls to action.
And after the U.S. Justice Department sued to block the law, we jumped into action again, calling on California state legislators to defend it and later filing an amicus brief with coalition partners.
Now Free Press Action is determined to bring back Net Neutrality for the rest of the country. Will you donate today to help restore Net Neutrality and other rules to ensure that everyone in the United States can afford high-speed internet and use it how they choose to?
Thank you for everything you do for our movement.
In solidarity,
Heather
Free Press Action
freepress.net
1. "Verizon Throttled Fire Department's 'Unlimited' Data During Calif. Wildfire," Ars Technica, Aug. 21, 2018  |
