FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contacts:
Michele Setteducato, michele@fitzgibbonmedia.com, 732-614-3818
Madison Donzis, madison@fitzgibbonmedia.com, 210-488-6220
Washington, DC — ColorOfChange applauds the FCC’s decision to reclassify Internet access as a telecommunications service. These new rules will protect net neutrality, which has been crucial to modern day civil rights movements and fights for equality. Though there is more work to be done, today is a monumental victory for civil rights, many years in the making.
Since 2010, the organization’s members have taken more than a hundred thousand actions pressuring the FCC and Congress to protect the open Internet. ColorOfChange worked alongside organizations in the Voices for Internet Freedom coalition that recognize net neutrality as a key civil rights issue. ColorOfChange thanks the Center for Media Justice, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, Free Press, Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, Presente.org, CREDO Action, all other net neutrality advocates and, most importantly, the millions of people across the country that stood up and made this their fight.
ColorOfChange began nearly ten years ago with a single email to a couple thousand friends and colleagues. Today, with more than one million members, the organization has spearheaded or contributed to many important civil rights victories. None of that work would have been be possible without an open Internet.
In response, Rashad Robinson, Executive Director of ColorOfChange.org, issued the following statement:
“Today, we celebrate a major civil rights victory. Our ability to be heard, counted, and visible in this democracy now depends on an open Internet, because it allows voices and ideas to spread based on their quality – not the amount of money behind them. Without net neutrality, the voices of everyday people wouldn’t have a chance.
“Throughout this fight — as our members raised their voices to make it clear that net neutrality is essential for civil rights — those who were being paid to carry water for the telecoms told us that this ‘wasn’t our issue,’ and that we couldn’t win. They claimed that big telecom companies, and telecom-funded legacy civil rights groups with tlike the National Action Network, Urban League, and NAACP, were too strong for us and our allies to face down. What they underestimated was the power of everyday people who used their voices strategically, empowered by the open Internet. We urge members of Congress to show they are on the side of communities, and not corporations, by supporting the FCC’s decision to implement the strongest net neutrality rules possible.”
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With over one million members, ColorOfChange is the nation’s largest online civil rights organization.